YORK City Rowing Club ace Tom Ransley and his Great Britain eight have rapped out an Olympic warning to gold medal favourites Germany.
The GB crew blasted to victory in the repechage to book their place in tomorrow’s London 2012 final at Eton Dorney and reassert their medal hopes.
Ransley and Co have won World Championship silver behind Germany two years running and finished second to their rivals again in Saturday’s heat.
But, after a blistering start in yesterday’s repechage, they held a fast-finishing Canadian boat at bay to lead the way into the final.
“I think it’s just good to do what we’ve been practicing and training to do and put it into racing,” said 26-year-old Ransley.
“It’s one more step, and we’ve given ourselves a chance in the final.
“We’ve taken a lot away from what we’ve learned. If we’d have won the heat we wouldn’t have learned what we did in the repechage, so we’ve just got to take that into the final.”
Meanwhile, Debbie Flood is not in the slightest bit bothered that Great Britain’s quadruple scull squeezed into the final by the back door – getting there was all that mattered to her.
Flood, who has won silver in the quad at the last two Olympic Games, and crew-mates Melanie Wilson, Beth Rodford and Frances Houghton were staring down the barrel of elimination yesterday when they found themselves in the last two places in the repechage race.
Fortune favoured the Brits as, while they were coming back strongly in the second half of the race, a costly error from the New Zealand quartet handed the Brits the chance to romp back into the top four, eventually finishing in third place.
It was still an improvement on Saturday’s heat, where Flood’s crew trailed home fourth and last, and it ensures Flood will get the chance to go for a third consecutive Olympic medal tomorrow.
And Harrogate-born Flood, who has three world titles to her name, is adamant confidence remains sky high in the British camp despite their brush with disaster.
“Obviously, ideally we’d be right up there at the front dominating the race, which would give us that confidence going into the final but we will be sitting on that start-line very confident anyway,” said Flood.
“Anything could happen in an Olympic final. We need to raise our game but all the boats need to raise their game as well. We are just hoping to do that more than anyone else.
“It isn’t how we planned it. We wanted to go out and dominate the race, but we knew it was going to be a tight one with everybody going for it.
“It was a really important race. The one that was going to get you into the Olympic final.
“We were definitely rowing better in the repechage than we were in our heat but, again, we want to be rowing that one step better in the final.”
• Lloyds TSB, proud supporter of Team GB and proud partner of the London 2012 Olympic Games. Get closer to the Games at lloydstsb.com/london2012
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