It was another successful day for the Canadian men’s eight team on Thursday at the World Rowing Championships in Bled, Slovenia as they were able to secure a bronze medal one day after qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics.
“I can definitely say this is a step in the right direction,” coxswain Brian Price told Rowing Canada. “And that’s how we see it, as a step. We’re going in as defending Olympic champions and that’s the reason why people go to the Olympics, to win the gold medal. So we improved quite a bit from Lucerne, and we’ve improved at this regatta. Now it’s a matter of going forward and doing more work going into 2012, so we can make up that ground.”
The Canadian team, which consists of Price, Andrew Byrnes, Will Crothers, Rob Gibson, Malcolm Howard, Conlin McCabe, Jeremiah Brown, Doug Csima and Gabe Bergen, made a late push to overtake Australia to claim the final spot on the podium. Germany captured the gold with a time of five minutes-28.81 seconds while the crew from Great Britain finished second.
“We executed a real solid race today to get back on the podium. The race was a real barn burner for the entire 2000 metres,” Gibson told Rowing Canada. “We now have 330 days until the London Olympics and are looking forward to training harder this winter to take a run at the World Champion German crew next summer.”
On Tuesday the team officially qualified for London 2012 by virtue of a second place finish in their semifinal heat. The top seven boats in the competition earn Olympic berths.