Estonian men's rowers going to Tokyo Olympics
The Estonian men's quadruple sculls have booked their place in this summer's Tokyo Olympics, following victory in a qualification competition in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Sunday.
The four, Jüri-Mikk Udam, Allar Raja, Tõnu Endrekson and Kaspar Taimsoo, won Saturday's preliminary race, and battled hard with boats from the Russian and Lithuanian teams in the final, finally pulling a fraction ahead to take victory with a time of 5 minutes 50.94 seconds – just 0.05 seconds behind the winners – over the 2,000-meter course.
Russia have also qualified for the Tokyo games, while Lithuania's third place mean they will not be taking part in the Tokyo games, which start on July 23.
Jüri-Mikk Udam said afterwards that it had been: "A very strong performance on our part. We knew that Russia would start strongly, and that we would have to push them hard in the second thousand [meters]. It was very difficult."
Estonia joins Australia, China, Germany, Great Britain, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway and Poland, as well as Russia, in this year's olympics, already postponed from last year due to the pandemic.
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Editor: Andrew Whyte
