The Ireland men's lightweight four of Paul Griffin, Richard Archibald, Gearoid Towey, and Eugene Coakley finished sixth this afternoon in a tight and fast encounter at the World Cup Regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland.
They finished seven seconds behind winners China, who were world champions in 2006.
Denmark and France took silver and bronze respectively, with Great Britain just edging Ireland into fifth.
The team will now look forward to the final Olympic qualifying event, which takes place in Poznan, Poland in two weeks' time.
There will be two places in Beijing on offer at that meeting.
Afterwards Eugene Coakley assessed their performance and spoke of the impending qualifying regatta:
‘It didn’t go as well as it had for the semi-final; we seemed to lack a little energy that we had yesterday, we were a bit physically flat. Just down the middle of the body of the race it kind of got away from us, and we never really got back into contact with the rest of the field.
‘We have two weeks now before Poznan. We had a brilliant race in the semi-final yesterday, so we’re really positive about that, we just have to go to Poznan and do the business,’ he added.
Earlier, the heavyweight men's pair Sean Casey and Jonno Devlin produced a positive performance to finish third in their B final and ninth overall.
Sean Casey said this on their performance;
'‘It was a much better race than yesterday. We had a much better race throughout the whole two kilometres.
' The middle thousand still needs some work; we just need to work on the tempo through there, but it was a much more solid race.’
Casey and Devlin, like the lightweight four, are attempting to qualify this boat for the Beijing Olympics.
They will get their chance at the final Olympic qualifying regatta in Poland beginning June 15th.
However, the pair is one of the most competitive boat classes and with only two spots available in Poland it’s going to be a massive challenge.
Casey is well aware of the test they face in Poland:
‘We’ve got two more weeks now before the Olympic qualifier; it’s obviously going to be fairly tough there, with only two qualifying spots left.
'The Canadians just won the A final quite well and they’re going to be looking to qualify as well, there will be seven or eight crews there altogether looking to qualify.
'We’re heading in the right direction, and we’ve got two weeks now to get it right, so that’s the goal.’
The heavyweight men's four of Alan Martin, Cormac Folan, Sean O'Neill, and James Wall also recorded a strong performance in their B final, with a fourth place finish and tenth overall.
They have already qualified for the Olympics but the crew will not be finalised until later this month.
Wall was pleased with the race.
‘We definitely put together a better race today in our B final today. We put more of our training from our camp over the last three weeks into our race today, which is a positive step.
'It’s not as good as we can go, but we’re pleased and we’ve made huge progress over the weekend, which is very important.’
