Two world-best times were set by Great Britain athletes during the opening day of the Beijing 2008 Paralympic Games Rowing regatta on Tuesday, September 9, at the Shunyi Olympic Rowing-Canoeing Park.
2006 world champion Helene Raynsford and compatriot, reigning world champion Tom Aggar, set the new world marks in winning their heats of the Women's and Men's Single Sculls -- Arms.
Impressively they achieved their times in slight crosswind conditions and both advance directly to Thursday's Single Sculls A-finals.
As if sensing the historical significance of the occasion, Raynsford achieved her time of 5:38:44 in the very first race of the inaugural Paralympic Games Rowing regatta -- incredibly slashing almost 20 seconds off the old mark (5:57.88).
After a characteristically fast start she established a boatlength lead by the 300m mark over Luidmila Vauchok (Belarus). Maintaining a low but powerful stroke rate, she pushed her lead out to two lengths by the halfway point of the 1000m journey.
She was never headed after that and crossed the line comfortably ahead of Vauchok and the rest of the field to record a memorable two and a half length win.
The second heat saw Ukraine's Svitlana Kupriianova get the best of the start to lead the field through the 250m mark. It was shortly after that point however that 2007 USA National Paralympic Rowing Champion Laura Schwanger made what was to become a race-winning move.
Lifting her rating by two strokes-per-minute, she overtook the early pacesetter and established a boatlength lead by the 500m mark. With 350m to go her advantage had stretched to over two lengths over Kupriianova and a fast-finishing Zhang Jinhong (China).
Schwanger eventually crossed the line 9.24 seconds in front of Zhang with Kupriianova 2.47 seconds further back.
Reigning world champion and former world-best time holder Claudia Santos (Brazil) had a disappointing row by her standards, finishing almost 13 seconds behind the winner.
In the first heat of the Men's Single Sculls - A, Ukraine's Oleksandr Petrenko secured his berth in Thursday's A-final with an all-the-way win over China's Tan Yeleng and Italy's Simone Miramonti. Petrenko converted a 7.00 second lead over the field at the half way mark into a strong 15.70 second victory.
He'll be joined in Thursday's gold medal decider by world champion Tom Aggar (Great Britain) who blitzed the Heat 2 field to post a 12.81 second win over Eli Nawi (Israel) in 5:12.25 -- bettering his own previous world-best time of 5:13.13.
Patrick Laureau (France) was third while pre-regatta medal fancy, fourth placegetter Dominic Moneypenny (Australia), has much work to do in Wednesday's repechage to avoid B-final relegation.
China scored a popular win in the first heat of the Mixed Double Sculls - TA when they took the spoils from Australia and Ukraine in the fastest heat time of 4:14.67.
Shan Zilong (China) and Zhou Yanjing won by a boatlength and a half and have booked a date to meet Heat 2 winners, the powerful Brazilian combination of Josiane Lima and Elton Santana, in Thursday's A-final.
The Brazilians (4:18.45) were untroubled in taking their heat over Italy and Great Britain and would be somewhat surprised to see their 2008 World Cup nemesis' and pre-regatta Gold medal co-favorites Poland produce an uncharacteristically slow row to finish fourth.
The first heat of the Mixed Coxed Four - LTA produced the most exciting race of the day with Italy (3:34.59) proving too good for the more fancied Great Britain crew. They were pushed all the way, but triumphed and won their coveted berth in Thursday's A-final by 2.22 seconds. The United States were third 2.98 seconds behind Italy.
And if Italy produced the excitement, China provided the style in Heat 2 -- the final event of the day.
The Li Ming-stroked combination rowed a technically perfect race (3:37.38) to account for pre-regatta favorites Germany and Brazil. They'll line up in Thursday's A-final in a centre lane and buoyed both by their stunning heat performance and huge hometown crowd support.
All crews that did not advance directly to the A-finals will appear in Wednesday's repechages which commence with the Women's Single Sculls - A at 3:00 p.m. (UTC/GMT +8)
(BOCOG September 9, 2008)