Tasmanian rower Alexandra Viney narrowly missed out on automatic qualification to her second straight Paralympic final.
The sole Tasmanian competing at the Paris Games was in the Australian PR3 mixed coxed four crew which finished third in their heat at the Vaires-sur-Marne Stadium.
Needing a top-two finish to progress directly to Sunday’s A-final, the Aussies finished 0.61 seconds off second place and top the list of crews heading to the repechage on Saturday evening.
Drawn in lane two of the second heat, the crew of Viney in seat two plus Tom Birtwhistle, Susannah Lutze, Tobiah Goffsassen and cox Hannah Cowap took an early lead before being overtaken by USA.
At the midway point the Americans had established a comfortable lead with France pushing Australia for the second qualification spot.
As the US stormed home to win in 6:57.18, the host nation edged into second place at the 1500m mark and held on to clock 7:02.13, just ahead of Australia’s 7:02.74.
Chasing a fourth consecutive gold medal in the event, Britain won the first heat in a world’s best time of 6:43.68 with Germany (6:56.84) also progressing.
Repechage will be at 7.50pm on Saturday with Australia drawn in lane four up against South Korea, Brazil, Italy, China and Spain. The first two finishers will progress to the A-final at 8.30pm on Sunday with the others to contest the B-final (at 6.50pm on Sunday).
Viney finished fourth in the same event at the Tokyo Games three years ago.