While Australia has had to wait a few anxious days between its last gold medal at the 2016 Olympics and Kim Brennan’s, her sport has had to endure eight years of waiting.
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Brennan still led by three seconds at the final mark, and she held her form perfectly to take the title.
The Australian rower had been unbeaten for two years before losing her way in rough conditions in her first row heat and finishing second earlier in the week. Australia used to be a superpower but after an absence of golds at London 2012 and just two silvers here heading into Saturday, the panic button was being readied.
Brennan had revealed pre-race that being in the spotlight did not sit comfortably with her.
“The most pressure comes from myself because I know how much I’ve put into this over the years”.
She explained that she has been away from her husband for three and a half months, saying, that chasing gold is “a really selfish thing to do”.
But she responded to that adversity in supreme fashion, with the 31-year-old from Melbourne controlling the race to hit the finish line in first place in a time of 7min 21.54sec.
But it wasn’t straightforward from the start in Rio.
“Who knows”, Twigg said on possible retirement. However, Twigg was not in contention here.
“I just looked up at Christ the Redeemer and thought ‘here I am, how cool is this?’ I get a chance to race for a medal at the Olympics”.
“She was so much more than a medal and so much more than a rower and I think this is incredibly special”, Brennan said.
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“Essentially it was a plan to race my own race and that’s what worked”. “When the cross-wind kicked in, that makes it harder for people to sprint so I just stayed calm in those closing stages”.
