Puspure Faces Stone Again in Tough Quarter-Final Challenge at Olympic Games

30th July 2012

# ROWING: Ireland’s Sanita Puspure faces a tough task tomorrow (Tuesday) if she is to attain her aim of qualifying for the Olympic semi-finals in the single sculls. In an ironic twist, she will most probably have to finish ahead of Genevra (Gevvie) Stone of the United States in their quarter-final to qualify. Three go through, and Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic and Frida Svensson of Sweden will be hot favourites to take the first two places, most likely leaving Stone and Puspure to fight it out for the third qualification place. In the Olympic Qualification regatta in May, Puspure targeted finishing ahead of Stone, but saw the American produce a fine performance to finish third. Puspure then showed great determination to take out Iva Obradovic of Serbia to take the fourth qualification place.

At Dorney Lake today, the New Zealand four, which features Irishman Sean O’Neill, finished fourth in their heat and will need to compete in the repechage to go further. The dominant Australian crew won the heat and set a stunning time of five minutes 47.06 seconds. This was a new Olympic Best time. Britain were also dominant in their race, and the United States won the third heat.

Olympic Games – Rowing, Dorney Lake, Day Three (Irish Interest)

Men’s Four – Heats (First Three Directly to A/B Semi-Finals; rest to Repechage) – Heat One: 1 Australia 5:47.06, 2 Germany 5:49.84, 3 Canada 5:50.78; 4 New Zealand 5:51.84, 5 Serbia 5:53.35.

Published in Rowing

Tagged under

About The Author

Liam Gorman

Email The Author

Liam Gorman is a writer and reporter. He is the co-author of Little Lady, One Man, Big Ocean, published in the United States and Canada as Crossing the Swell. He is the rowing correspondent of the Irish Times.

We've got a favour to ask

More people are reading Afloat.ie than ever thanks to the power of the internet but we're in stormy seas because advertising revenues across the media are falling fast. Unlike many news sites, we haven’t put up a paywall because we want to keep our marine journalism open.

Afloat.ie is Ireland's only full–time marine journalism team and it takes time, money and hard work to produce our content.

So you can see why we need to ask for your help.

If everyone chipped in, we can enhance our coverage and our future would be more secure. You can help us through a small donation. Thank you.