Canadian lightweight women's double sculls team make semis in Rio

By Pete Evans, CBC Sports

Canada's lightweight women's double sculls team booking their ticket to the semifinals by winning their rowing heat in Rio on Monday, keeping their medal ambitions on track.

The duo of Lindsay Jennerich and Patricia Obee, both from Victoria, beat out a Polish team to win their qualifying heat with a time of seven minutes, 3.51 seconds. The pair were in third place at the halfway mark before picking up the pace on the home stretch and never looking back.

• Rowing duo seek Rio redemption after London heartbreak

A day after rough winds postponed all racing, many other Canadian rowing teams were back out on the water in Rio on Monday, trying to book their tickets into the next round.

• WATCH: Catch all of Monday's rowing action livestreaming here
• SCHEDULE & RESULTS: Rowing at Rio 2016
• VIDEO: Canadian men miss out on qualifying for finals

In the men's quadruple sculls, the Canadian team came in 4th place in their repechage race after failing to move on two days ago. Will Dean of Kelowna, B.C., Rob Gibson of Kingston, Ont., Pascal Lussier of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., and Julien Bahain — who was born in France but competes for Canada — needed a top-2 result to advance, but instead had to settle for fifth place with a time of 5:56.28.

"We came to Rio expecting to podium, if not to win," Gibson said after the race. "This is not the way we envisioned the outcome."

The loss is also a blow to Rowing Canada, which since the last Olympics have split the iconic men's eight team into two — the men's quad, and a men's four team, which raced later on Monday.

The idea was to give Canada more shots at a medal in multiple events.

For their part, the other men's four team finished second in their heat, good enough to avoid the repechage and advance to the semis later this week.

On the women's side, the women's eight team, who finished in third place in their qualifying heat and will race again in the repechage race on Wednesday to try to book their ticket into the medal round. They'll need to finish in the top four to move on.

In the men's lightweight four repechage, Canada's team came in fourth place and failed to qualify for the semifinals.

Later in the day, the women's pair team of Jennifer Martins of Toronto and Nicole Hare lost their heat, but will get another shot to qualify in the repechage.

"The wind caught usa bit off guard off the start," Martins told the CBC in an interview after the race. "Hopefully we can improve on that in the [repechage] tomorrow."

With files from The Canadian Press