Cuban duo Ajete-Cardona advance to C/D semifinal at world rowing championship

HAVANA, Cuba, Sep 6 (ACN) The Cuban duo of Carlos Ajete and Reidy Cardona advanced today to the C/D semifinal of the World Championship in Belgrade, Serbia, by finishing in fourth place in the quarterfinals of the open short sculls double pair (2x), based in the Ada Cigaganlija Park canal on the Sava River.

According to the International Federation website www.worldrowing.com, Ajete and Cardona covered the 2,000 meters with a time of 6:52.30 minutes in the second heat of that phase, behind the crews from Serbia (6:38.79), Ireland (6:41.89) and Germany (6:46.11), which advanced to the A/B semifinal.

Now the possibility for the Cubans is to fight this Thursday to try to be included among the six boats that will discuss the overall positions from 13 to 18 in the C final, or from 19 to 24 in the D final.

With either of these two alternatives, Ajete and Cardona were left without the possibility of Olympic qualification, since the competition distributes 11 places for Paris 2024 in that modality, for which they needed to advance to the finals A or B, which put at stake the places from first to sixth and from seventh to 12th, in that order.

In their debut, the Cubans (6:19.32) finished fifth in the preliminaries, and in the repechage they finished fourth (6:47.31).

This event is the first of the competitions that grant tickets for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games, which will be joined by another world championship scheduled for May 2024, as well as the continental pre-Olympics, but only for the light disciplines.