The tense glances cast around on the stake boats would have confirmed the Irish semi-finalists were in the company of rowing's elite yesterday, but any early trepidation turned to exasperation later on as illness and a steering mistake cut Ireland's giant-killing plans down to size. Under normal circumstances, the difference between Ireland's women's pair and the likes of the Romanians - a long-time dominating force in women's rowing - would be four or five lengths; a gulf that Vanessa Lawrenson and Debbie Stack might narrow if they rowed out of their skins and if Veronica Conchela (five Olympic and 11 world medals ) was to have an off day.

That was, essentially, the race strategy, with three A final places on offer, affording some leeway. After the first 500 metres, though, the UCDL students were falling back on the rest of the field and by the halfway mark, they were already 15 seconds off the lead pace. When the call came to raise the workrate, Stack's legs had nothing extra to give and after 20 strokes, the pair wound down to paddle over the line.

"There was no point in killing ourselves to save a few seconds," Stack explained later. "The start was grand, but after that the effort was taking too much out of me. It felt as if someone had put a weight on the end of my oar and by that stage, I was out of breath."

Typical of their luckless season, Stack's post-race medical diagnosed a possible virus that had been shrugged off earlier in the week. If confirmed, this may force coach Donal Hanrahan to reassess their place in tomorrow's B final. Until then, the target of finishing in the world top nine remains.

With a number of the big players choosing the coxless pair to rebuild Olympic eight campaigns, Lawrenson yesterday claimed that horizons could have been higher if a strategy to capitalise on the jump in standards had existed for the Irish women.

"If something could have gone wrong this season, it did, and better support would have helped. "Our one good race was in Paris, when we beat the Danes. Now they've just made the A final and if we had had a better tradition of women's rowing at home, we should have improved at least half as much as them."

"We're under-treated in the current set up and it needs separate coaching, rather than being tacked on to the end of the lightweight men's programme."

The pair's frustration at semi-final events was shared by lightweight sculler, Ross O'Donovan, who narrowly missed out on a B final place after hitting a marker buoy on his charge to the line. The collision, 600 metres out, immediately set the 20-year-old back two lengths and it took another five strokes to pick up the chase for fourth place.

O'Donovan went on to cut his deficit with Finn, Heikki Haavikko, by half in the last quarter, to under four seconds - it was, though, a tense performance for the first-time international. Having slept for just six hours since qualifying from Tuesday's repechage, O'Donovan later admitted that the experience would probably produce an improvement next year.

"There's only about five seconds between the top five scullers and even without the collision, I could have got another five seconds off my time today. "Being here has given me an indication of how fast I am against people you only see on television. Now I know they're just human and they're beatable."