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Saturday, February 22, 2025

T&T rower Chow qualifies for Tokyo Olympics

by

Rachael Thompson-King
1449 days ago
20210306
T&T Olympian Felice Aisha Chow

T&T Olympian Felice Aisha Chow

T&T's row­er Fe­lice Aisha Chow has qual­i­fied for the up­com­ing Tokyo Olympic Games.

Yes­ter­day, Chow placed third in the women's sin­gles sculls at the Amer­i­c­as Olympic and Par­a­lympic Qual­i­fi­ca­tion Re­gat­ta in Rio de Janeiro in Brazil.

"I'm so hap­py, I get the chance to rep­re­sent Trinidad one more time on the Olympic stage," said Chow, who in 2016 be­came the first row­er from this coun­try to com­pete at an Olympic Games held in Rio de Janeiro.

She will com­pete at the Tokyo Olympics while will take place from Ju­ly 23 to Au­gust 8 af­ter it was post­poned from last year due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Ac­cord­ing to Chow, for row­ing at the Olympics, there are 156 coun­tries that are mem­bers of the row­ing fed­er­a­tion but there are on­ly 29 spots for my event, the women's sin­gle skulls at the Olympics and most of those spots are al­lo­cat­ed via these con­ti­nen­tal re­gat­tas.

"This last year has been in­cred­i­bly dif­fi­cult and chal­leng­ing for many rea­sons with the pan­dem­ic (COVID-19) in this re­gard, it was no dif­fer­ent with the or­gan­is­ers mak­ing a lot of last-minute changes to the sched­ule and adap­ta­tions and that was re­al­ly hard on all the ath­letes but it was def­i­nite­ly an­oth­er chal­lenge to get through," said Chow, who added that on the first day of com­pe­ti­tion dur­ing the heats she "had some rust to shake off" since she hasn't com­pet­ed in at an of­fi­cial re­gat­ta since 2019.

"For my next race, the repechage, I was able to do much bet­ter and I won that race to ad­vance to the fi­nal which is a re­al­ly good thing," said Chow with a gig­gle yes­ter­day. "It was what I need­ed to do!"

In the six-com­peti­tor fi­nal, she need­ed to se­cure one of the top five spots to book a place at the Olympics and that she did, cross­ing third in eight min­utes and 13.91 sec­onds. She fol­lowed to the line Mex­i­co's Ke­nia Lechuga (08:04.62) and Ale­jan­dra Alon­so of Paraguay (08:09.82), re­spec­tive­ly.

"It was an ex­treme­ly tough race, every­one rac­ing for their lives, rac­ing for this op­por­tu­ni­ty," she said of her par­tic­i­pa­tion in the fi­nal. "I was able to push off sev­er­al com­peti­tors and snag a bronze, third place and a spot at the Tokyo Olympics.

"So I'm su­per ex­cit­ed about this, I'm su­per ex­cit­ed about rep­re­sent­ing T&T one more time and so for now. I'm go­ing to take the day off and re­group for a day or so, then get back to train­ing for the last cou­ple of months for the big Games Go Team TTO," said a smil­ing Chow as she pumped her first.

Cel­e­brat­ing with her was T&T Olympic Com­mit­tee pres­i­dent Bri­an Lewis.

"Con­grat­u­la­tions go out to Dr Fe­lice Aisha Chow. She fin­ished an in­cred­i­ble ef­fort even with all the cir­cum­stances in­clud­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic and for her to ac­cept the chal­lenge, to be de­ter­mined and trav­el to the qual­i­fiers in Brazil's Rio de Janeiro and qual­i­fy­ing for Tokyo 2020 is an in­cred­i­ble achieve­ment and a cred­it to her in­domitable will and un­wa­ver­ing com­mit­ment and ded­i­ca­tion to achiev­ing her goals," said Lewis yes­ter­day.

"She has qual­i­fied for her sec­ond Olympics and again in row­ing, con­tin­u­ing to be a his­to­ry-mak­er in Team T&T. Con­grat­u­la­tions to her and her team, her coach­es etc.

"I'm in­cred­i­bly proud of her and her ef­fort." 


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