Phillips and Bird Qualify for Olympic Final

Western Australian Institute of Sport athletes Jesse Phillips and Stephen Bird have produced an excellent race on Day 14 of the London Olympic Games to progress to the A Final of the men’s K2 200m on a scorching day at Eton Dorney.

Competitors were greeted with the best weather at the venue across the last two weeks and the Australian pair did not disappoint with a thrilling finish that saw them book an A Final berth by just seven hundredths of a second.

Bird and Phillips crossed the line in a time of 34.071 to edge out Latvia and Phillips said the feeling was incredible.

“We’ve been skirting around the A Final for a few years now at world championship level and this year we’ve really stepped up at world cup level,” Phillips said.

“We jumped on the podium at the last world cup so our expectations were building throughout the season and this was our pinnacle – making the Olympic final.

“We crossed the line and 30 seconds later we looked up on the scoreboard and saw we had come fourth. We got it!”

Fellow West Australian paddler Alana Nicholls suffered heartbreak by missing her A Final of the women’s K1 200m by only 3 hundredths of a second.

Nicholls faced a loaded semi-final with two of the top three ranked paddlers in the world alongside Nicholls, who herself tied for fourth at the world championships last year.

At the finish Nicholls vied for the third and final qualifying place but succumbed to Portuguese paddler Teresa Portela by the narrowest of margins.

Earlier in the morning gold medal hero Murray Stewart revealed the illness he had been battling during the week as he bowed out in the heats of the men’s K1 200m.

Stewart, who 24 hours earlier had soared to gold with team mates Tate Smith, David Smith and Jacob Clear, had been running a fever the night before he won the gold medal and had been suffering from a chest and sinus infection.

The Manly paddler, 26, finished sixth in his heat this morning, with his time not quick enough to progress through to the next round of racing.

Men’s C1 200m paddler Sebastian Marczak bowed out at the semi-final stage with a number of excellent times being set on the clear waters at Dorney.

Marczak, 29, had qualified for the semi-finals with a sixth place finish in his heat but faced a tricky semi-final, with just two crews to progress to the A Final.

The New South Welshman crossed the line in sixth in his semi-final in a time of 43.441, while the Russian and Spanish paddlers advance to the medal race.