Semi Finals... Check

Today we raced in the second of two A/B Semi Finals. The top 3 advance to Final A and qualify their boat for the Paralympics immediately - competing for the 1-6 places. The bottom 3 continue on to Final B where they compete for the top 2 spots in that finall to qualify for London 2012.

We lined up between Russia and China, with Germany, Ireland and Italy on the other side of the course. With 4 minutes until the start we were in the stakes preparing ourselves. The course goes silent and though there are many people just feet away watching the starting line, we are left to our own. Focused on the goal. We are qualifying for 2012 in this race. Eleni is going to establish our length in the stroke seat. Emma and Andrew are the engine room. Bring the power and back Eleni up. Eric in the bow is going to bring the blade work - clean catch then legs to a quiet finish. We have our mission. It's time to do it.

Attention
Red Light [Attention More]
Beep

And we're off. We had the fastest start in the heat and were up in the first 100 meters. That feels good. We settled into a strong rhythm with a clean ratio shift and proceeded on in second place. The German's have a great base cadence and pushed up ~4 seats on us. The rhythm held and the legs came down and we drove forward in 2nd for much of the race. As Ireland approached we were aware of them, and also aware that we were definitively qualified. We used our length and our legs to close the race in 3rd just behind IRL. Eleni was long, Emma was together, Andrew was powerful, and Eric was quiet in the bow. Our third place finish guarantees a bid for 2012.

Quote of the day: "I had fun! That was really fun for 3 minutes" from Emma. I wonder what that means about the last 32.98 seconds.

We are excited about our progress so far and really looking forward to tomorrow's race. We line up in our lanes:
1- USA
2- Canada
3- Germany
4- Great Britain
5- Ireland
6- France