Medal detector going strong at rowing venue By Rob Longley, SUN MEDIA

BEIJING - As the signal on the Canadian medal detector weakens at most Olympic venues here in the Chinese capital, it continues to get stronger in suburban Shunyi.

Canada qualified two more boats for their weekend finals of the rowing regatta after strong rebound efforts by both the men’s pair and women’s eight on Wednesday afternoon.

The two crews joined the men’s eight, who are heavily favoured to bring home gold, as finalists when the medals are on the line at the Shunyi Rowing and Canoe Course.

“As a crew we’ve always gotten better progressively with each race at a regatta,” said first-time Olympian Heather Mandoli of the women’s boat which won it’s semifinal after finishing third in their preliminary heat on Monday. “It’s something that’s happened, but we don’t do it intentionally.

“Our hope for the final on Sunday is to put together our best race. It was nice to get out there and feel we still have the ability to race.”

Though the Canadian women were shut out of the medals at the 2004 Athens Games - and the eight didn’t even qualify for the final - the boat has gotten faster by the month in 2008.

With a mix of old and new, veterans Buffy Williams and Darcy Marquardt have helped it emerge as a threat to at least contend for a medal, though it will be difficult to challenge the favoured U.S. for gold.

“I think this is the closest performance to what we’ve been doing all summer in terms of our form,” coxswain Lesley Thompson-Willie said of the solid effort in Wednesday’s repechage. “We’re going to go out and race hard and race fast.”

Earlier Wednesday, it was the men’s pair of David Calder and Scott Frandsen who rebounded from a sloppy effort in their heat to take the semifinal in which they finished ahead of the strong New Zealand boat. Whatever caused them to struggle in their first outing here was apparently ironed out for the semi.

“In the last three days since the heat we’ve been making sure we were focused,” Frandsen said. “The fear and nerves can’t get to you. We stayed focused and loose.”

Speaking of loose, the men’s eight continued to train for their race, which is expected to be the entire Canadian Olympic team’s first legitimate shot at reaching the top of a podium. The reigning world champions have been enjoying the luxury of a relaxed approach as they bid to make up for a disappointing fifth-place finish four years ago.

“We’re used to not getting any down time so it’s nice to be able to unwind and focus on what we have to do,” captain Kyle Hamilton said. ““We’re not rowing as much as we do at home in Vancouver so we have a little more time to nap and get rested up.”

“I read and play a little on-line poker - with very, very low stakes.”

Different game, but on the weekend those stakes get a whole lot higher for the country and its crews.