The Women’s Eight were the first of the two Australian boats out on the water in the second last race of the day. The crew, made up of Genevieve Horton in the bow seat, Olympia Aldersey, Bronwyn Cox, Giorgia Patten, Sarah Hawe, Georgina Rowe, Katrina Werry and Molly Goodman in the stroke seat with James Rook as Coxwsain were in lane one. The Australians were up against a tough field of Canada, New Zealand, USA, Romania and China.  

Looking to finish on a high, the crew were fast from the start, setting a strong pace and rhythm to keep up with the Canadian boat who took an early lead. Placed second after the first 500 meters, only 0.66 seconds off the pace, the Australians fought hard to hold their position, but the opposition were too strong and after fading in the second half of the race, the Australians finishing fifth with a time of 6:03.92.  

“We didn’t go straight through in the heat, and we had to race the repechage,” Molly Goodman said. 

“We didn’t have the ideal race in either of those races, so we came away from them and focussed on what we needed to do better. It’s great to make the final in the first place.  

“We knew we could perform if we had a great race. And we did, we came out strong and sat throughout the middle and those other crews were just too fast in the end. We’re disappointed but we are proud of what we have done.” 

The Australian’s finished behind gold medallists Canada, New Zealand and China and the USA.  

The Men’s Eight followed immediately after in the final race of the day. It was another stacked field of the United States, New Zealand, Germany, Netherlands, and Great Britain with the Australian’s drawing lane six.  

Nicolas Lavery was in the bow seat with Jack O’Brien, Joshua Booth, Simon Keenan, Nicholas Purnell, Timothy Masters, Angus Dawson and Angus Widdicome making up the crew with Stuart Sim the Coxswain. The Australians were reserved out of the blocks, a tough start to what would be a fast race. Unfortunately for the Aussies, they wouldn’t be able to make up the time or speed, the crew finishing 6th overall at 5:36.23 with New Zealand winning the gold medal ahead of Germany and Great Britain.  

Stuart Sim said, “The whole Japan, Olympic Games, has been such a journey to get to through that the race is just one small part of it.”  

“We train as a team to a national training centre model as a group. 

“That makes it such a great team, so we talk about the tip of the spear and the spear is the whole regatta. The rest of the team did a great job setting some tone, giving us a lot of good confidence saying we had the fitness and the ability to win it if we could string a race together on the day. 

“There are mixed emotions. You’ve got some guys who have been to two or three Olympics, Josh Booth and Nick Purnell and they bring an older statesman mentality to it, but at the same time us younger guys, we have a 20-year-old Angus Dawson, we really wanted to make their last race really special, so that’s disappointing, but they bring a lot of maturity.” 

The Australian Rowing team will wrap up their time in Tokyo over the next few days before returning to Australia.