Redgrave digs in to keep dream alive
British rowing star Steve Redgrave had to work hard on Thursday to keep his dream of a record fourth consecutive Olympic gold medal alive.

Redgrave and partner Matthew Pinsent, reigning Olympic and world champions, had to make a huge push at 1,000 meters to haul back Americans Michael Peterson and Jonathan Holland and move ahead of the field.

After the race, however, the pair said they had kept to their race plan. "We rowed the race we wanted to row and won without expending too much energy," Pinsent said.

The Americans finished fourth and failed to make the final.

The British pair won their semifinal by three-quarters of a length but their time was almost four seconds slower than that of the Australians who won the first semifinal.

David Weightman, bow of the Australian pair, said the difference in times was encouraging.

"It's good to be the fastest and the times are encouraging but at the end of the day they don't mean that much."

No rower has won four consecutive Olympic titles and Redgrave would become only the fourth athlete in any sport to do so if he wins the final on Saturday.

In the women's single sculls Canada's Silken Laumann made sure of her final place with a strong finishing burst which took her clear of the Swedish and Belarussian scullers.

"Just getting into the final is a huge relief. I drew a tough semifinal ... and I didn't want to be the one who didn't make it," Laumann said after the race.

Laumann was favored to win the gold in Barcelona but was injured in a rowing collision 10 weeks before the Games. She confounded doctors by competing and ended up winning a bronze medal.

In the past four years misfortune has continued to plague Laumann's rowing career, with a disqualification from the 1994 world final and a positive drug test at the 1995 Pan American Games.

In the other semifinal, reigning Olympic champion Elisabeta Lipa of Romania, making a comeback after two years away from sculling, led until the last 10 strokes. But a final push by the field broke her and she came in fourth.

Controversy continued to surround the enforced use of miniature television cameras attached to the stern of each boat. The cameras add almost an extra kilogram in weight to boats that only weigh 14 kilograms.

Rumors that some boat manufacturers had been able to reduce the weight of their boats below the 14-kilogram minimum after the cameras had been attached were denied by organizers.

"We weighed all the boats before the cameras were attached. We know exactly how much the cameras weigh and we can remove them and re-weigh the boats if necessary," said Matt Smith, executive director of FISA, the international rowing body.

This story written by Reuters correspondents