Article by Melissa Woods, courtesy of the Canberra Times.
Jess Morrison and Annabelle McIntyre are celebrating becoming two-time Olympic medallists after winning Australia’s first rowing medal in Paris, clinching bronze in the women’s pair.
The Australians finished behind dominant Dutch duo Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester, with Romanians Ioana Vrinceanu and Roxana Anghel taking silver on Friday morning at the Vaires-sur-Marne Nautical Stadium.
It’s the second Olympic medal for the Australian duo after they won gold racing in the four in Tokyo.
The pair were embraced by billionaire mining magnate and rowing benefactor Gina Rinehart after receiving their medal.
Morrison, 32, said Rinehart did more than just write cheques for the rowers.
“She was just saying how proud of us she was,” said Morrison, who despite completing an economics degree and MBA relies on Rinehart’s direct funding to the sport.
“She’s really a part of the experience. She doesn’t just provide support and watch from afar, she’s really in it with us.
“We get messages from her and she really stays up in the loop in her busy schedule so we really appreciate the amount of time she takes.”
Morrison and McIntyre join Kate Slatter, who won gold in the pair in 1996 and silver in 2000, and Kim Brennan, who earned two sculling medals in London and gold in Rio, as the only Australian women with multiple Olympic rowing medals.
The pair said they were satisfied they had given their all.
“We’re really proud of ourselves,” the 27-year-old West Australian McIntrye said.
“We went out there to execute our race plan and that was to be really aggressive out of the start and just race the race, really.
“It’s always hard to get pipped on the line but we’re really proud of our performance. We put everything out there today and couldn’t have done much better.”
Clevering and Meester, who were part of the Dutch four Australia relegated to silver in Tokyo, burst out from the start line and were never headed.
They finishing 4.3 seconds clear as the rest of the field battled for the minor medals.
Australia appeared destined for silver after sitting in that position for much of the final but were overtaken by Romania about 100m before the finish, missing second by 0.57 seconds.
The bronze medal offers some redemption for Morrison and McIntyre after they missed the pair final altogether in Tokyo.
They were attempting the rare feat in Olympic rowing of winning medals in two different boat classes at a Games and achieved their first goal with gold in the four.
But due to a tropical storm, Tokyo organisers rescheduled racing which meant the pair only had two hours between the final of the four and the semi-final of the pair, rather than the expected 24 hours.
It proved too tough, with the duo fading in the final metres to miss the medal race by 0.34 seconds.
“It was just finishing off the cycle. Coming away with not just the journey but I guess the hardware as well is always nice,” McIntyre said.
