Moffatt and Casson finish in 12th

The Canadian lightweight women’s double crew gets relegated to the ‘B’ final

Bethany’s Jill Moffatt and partner Jennifer Casson finished in 12 place at the Tokyo Olympics after finishing sixth in the “B” final of the Olympic rowing lightweight women’s double on Thursday in a time of 6:59.72.

The Canadian crew were relegated to the B final after a sixthplace finish in Wednesday’s second semifinal on tremendously choppy conditions, which saw a Norwegian sculler knocked out of his boat during a lightweight men’s double semifinal, at the Sea Forest Waterway in Japan.

In the semifinal, Moffatt, 28, and Casson, of Kingston, were slow out of the gates and never threatened the leaders as Italy rowed to a world record time of 6:41.36 only minutes after Great Britain set a world mark of 6:41.99 in the other semifinal.

In the “B” final, they were 10.56 seconds behind the winning Switzerland team, which finished seventh in the division.

“We want to leave here with our heads held high and I don’t think we had our best race by any means today,” Moffatt told Rowing Canada following the semifinal.

“We’re both obviously upset about it, wondering what just happened, and we don’t want to feel that way, and the best way not to feel that way is to do something about it. So we’re kind of excited to have another opportunity to go out there and enjoy ourselves and see what we can do.”

This is the first Olympics for both athletes who finished eighth at the 2019 world championship in their first race together.

The United States finished second in the semifinal to Italy followed by Romania as the top three advanced to the A final also held Thursday morning. Russia placed fourth while Japan edged out Canada for fifth place.

Great Britain won the other semifinal followed by France and the Netherlands.

Trevor Jones, 23, of Burleigh Falls, rowed in the men’s single sculls first semifinal at 11 a.m. Thursday Tokyo time (10 p.m. Wednesday ET, and results were not yet available at press time). His race includes medal threats in Norway’s Kjertil Borch and Croatia’s Damir Martin. The top three advance to Friday’s A final (8:45 p.m. Thursday ET).

The two Canadian crews coached by Peterborough native Terry Paul were both relegated to “B” finals which took place Wednesday morning (Tuesday evening ET). The men’s four placed second in the B final 1.11 seconds behind Poland for an eighth overall placing. The women’s four finished fourth in the B final for a 10th overall result.