Sixth place finish in Final a tough pill to swallow, admits Timoney

IRELAND’S Ross Corrigan and Nathan Timoney finished sixth in the Olympic Pairs Final and then set their sights on Los Angeles in four years time.

The Enniskillen pair who on only came together before the European Championship last year were in contention until the half way point — they were third after 500m — but fell away in the final 1000m.

As expected, Croatia won the gold after a terrific race against Great Britain who had set the pace for most of the race.

Switzerland took the bronze medal. Timoney admitted: “It wasn’t the race we wanted, it wasn’t really a replication of the Semi-final or the heats.

“We struggled to find the finesse out there today, we struggled to find the step up, that extra gear.

“It’s a tough pill to swallow but certainly a lot of lessons we can take from it. It doesn’t stop here.

“We’ll move forward, we’ll go home and think about it and reflect.

“We’re quite young, we’re racing people like the Croatians who are exceptional athletes, almost twice our ages and we look up to those guys and even being in the mix, to race against those lads, it’s incredible and something we can take away from it but, yeah, tough pill to swallow. We’re not satisfied with the result.”

Corrigan added: “Sometimes you go out with all the intent in the world but rowing’s one of those sports where it’s not brute force and it’s not art either, it’s a mixture in between and it’s a fine balance. If we were leading the race we might have said that was an amazing race and the best we could have produced but I think, we probably thought we’d get the jump on a few boys off the start like we did last year and lead to the 500m but we kind of got caught off-guard at the start.

“We worked for it and were trying to get on the podium but like, at the end of the day it’s an Olympic final and good performances put out there by everyone and unfortunately we weren’t on the right side of things. So many positives to take from it.

“We’re both pushing on for LA anyway and we’ll see what happens… we’re delighted to be part of such a high standard team who push for medals because that’s the main thing.”

Though they finished sixth and last in 6:30.49 it was the fastest time they recorded in the regatta.

Croatia’s winning time was 6.23.68. It was the third successive gold medal secured by the remarkable Sinkovic brothers, Martin and Valent.

Earlier in the morning, Aughnacloy’s Rebecca Edwards and her partner Chloe Brow finished last in the Women’s Pair B Final.