Dilleen and Purspure look to Saturday's B Final for Olympic qualification

Sanita Puspure and Lisa Dilleen put it all on the line today in the semi-final of the women's double sculls but could not make the first three to guarantee automatic qualification for the London Olympics.

The Irish pair will now race early on Saturday morning where they must finish in the top two to ensure Olympic qualification.

With only eight Olympic qualification places on offer this year in this event, the first three in this race were effectively booking their tickets to London as they joined the first three from the previous semi-final to make the A final of six boats.

Puspure and Dilleen were game for the first thousand metres, trying to hold on to the front runners. However just after half way it was apparent that being in the first three was not achievable and the Irish girls backed off to conserve their energies for the B final, where two Olympic places are still on offer to the winner and runner up on Saturday.

Britain's Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger won the race with New Zealand and the Czech Republic taking the other A Final places.

Ireland High Performance director, Martin McElroy said, "It's never easy to upset the form book in world class rowing but Ireland's girls gave it their all from the beginning of the race and went out hard."

"With the B final coming up early tomorrow morning, it made sense for Lisa and Sanita to conserve their energy for a final attempt at qualification on Saturday."

"It's still a big ask of these girls to qualify this year, but we've seen so many upsets at this championships that you have to put pressure on the opposition and see what happens."

"Lisa and Sanita tried their best today and that's all we can ever ask of them. This is a very tense regatta for all countries with Olympic qualification being more the goal than medals for so many. We have a young team and they're learning what it's all about."

The B Final will take place on Saturday morning at 10:13 CET (09.13 Irish time) with the winners and runners up securing Olympic qualification.