RowingIT WASN'T supposed to end this way, and they knew it. Not even the prospect of the B-final was any consolation for Ireland's heavyweight four crew, as they exited Shunyi Rowing Park yesterday without even trying to explain themselves, reports Ian O'Riordan

They were always going to be up against it, yet their sixth and last-place finish in the semi-final - having come so impressively through the heats - could only be an anti-climax. Having being tailed off quite dramatically after the opening 500 metres, they closed down on the leaders in the final stretch, yet still ended up some ways off making the final.

The quartet of Seán O'Neill, Seán Casey, Jonno Devlin and Cormac Folan clocked five minutes, 58.14 seconds, and that at least beat their heat time by over four seconds. There was no consolation either by the fact that the second heat was won by Slovenia in 5:56.08, with Germany progressing in third in 5:58.72 - marginally slower than the Irish time.

Still, the Irish pace was no match for the furious tempo set early on in their race, first by the French crew, and later by Britain, who led the field through the final 1,000 metres.

With only the top three boats progressing, Ireland gave themselves some chance when they closed up to fifth. Instead, they faded again at the most crucial juncture, with the final placings going to Britain (5:54.77), the fast-finishing Australians (5:56.20) and long-time leaders France (5:56.73).

Swimming

IT'S HARD sometimes when you break an Irish record for the second time in 24 hours and still don't get any tangible reward, and so it proved for Andrew Bree, reports Ian O'Riordan.

Back in the Water Cube yesterday morning following his impressive progression to the semi-finals of the 200 metres breaststroke, Bree finished fifth - leaving him 11th overall, and thus missing the final by three places, or .19 of a second.

His finishing time of 2:10.16 again bettered the Irish record he'd set the evening before, when he lowered it to 2:10.91 from the 2:13.15 set last year. But it was just marginally short of what he needed in what was an extremely fast heat — with victory going to Japan's Kosuke Kitajima in 2:08.61, a new Olympic record.

Later, Bree decided against going in the heats of the 200 metres individual medley, clearly content that he had got as much as probably could have hoped for in Beijing, while underlining his prospects for the future. At 27, he's clearly swimming better than ever.

Sailing

A SECOND spectacular race win for Ireland's Ger Owens and Phil Lawton at the 470 class event at Qingdao yesterday morning made the Dun Laoghaire pair the toast of the Irish squad at the mid-point of the series.

However, the challenging conditions at the Yellow Sea venue were rammed home when their second race of the day saw them place 25th in the 29-strong fleet, obliging them to count their lower 22nd place from race one and use the single event discard.

Owens and Lawton are hovering just outside the top 10 once again but are within a few points of regaining a place in the medal race final.

Australians Nathan Wilmot and Malcolm Page remain on course to take gold.