Canada's women's single scull rower Carling Zeeman drinks from a water bottle protected in a plastic bag to avoid contamination from lake water during practice at Lagoa in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil on Thursday Aug. 4, 2016., ahead of the 2016 Summer Olympics. She won her heat Saturday to advance to the quarter-finals.Sean Kilpatrick/The Canadian Press
Canada's Carling Zeeman advanced to the quarter-finals in the women's single sculls as the Olympic rowing competition kicked off in windy conditions Saturday.
Two other Canadian crews failed to advance and will have to row in repechage rounds.
The 25-year-old from Cambridge, Ont., won her heat in a time of 8:41.12.
The top three in each heat advance.
Ireland's Sanita Puspure was second followed by Nadia Negm of Egypt.
The rowers are battling high winds and choppy water at Rio's picturesque Logoa Stadium, many struggling to stay in their lanes. The men's pair from Serbia even capsized with both rowers ending up in the water.
"It was pretty rough," said Zeeman. "Through the middle (of the course) it was whitecapping. Those are tough conditions any time. The key for me was to just stay calm and stay cool and keep going, don't ever take an off-stroke or give up."
Zeeman said she took on "quite a bit of water."
"In the warm-up zone you get a sense of what the race is going to be like because it's the same water," she said. "I knew it would be a totally different sort of race because it was such a strong wind. From the start line I knew I had about 200 meters of calm water before the show started. Going into the race, that was plan — start hard and settle into a rhythm that I would be able to sustain for 2,000 metres."
Brendan Hodge of South Delta, B.C., Maxwell Lattimer of Delta, B.C., Nicolas Pratt of Kingston, Ont., and Eric Woelfl of St. Catharines, Ont., will need to race in Sunday's repechage after finishing fourth in their heat and missing a chance to book a spot in the semifinals.
The men's quadruple sculls crew of Julien Bahain — who was born in France but now competes for Canada — Will Dean of Kelowna, B.C., Kingston's Rob Gibson and Pascal Lussier of St-Jean-sur-Richelieu, Que., finished fifth in their heat and will also have to row again Monday if they are to race in the final. They needed a top-two finish to advance.
The quad struggled with the conditions and couldn't recover after Gibson lost his grip on his oar.
"I thought the guys had rowed a pretty good race. They kept clean in the worst of that water and they were actually just starting to make a move, gather a little bit of pace to be in a good position," said Canadian head coach Martin McElroy. "We know that they've got really good finishing speed. The quad is a technically complex event. The conditions have been pretty rough and unfortunately one of the handles got away from one of the guys. Then you're in trouble."
He's confident they can bounce back.
"These guys have had to pick themselves up before," he said. "They had to come through the qualifier earlier this year. There's a deep mental strength within these guys. We have confidence in the guys that they're going to be able to turn this around."