8:53a.m. 19th August 2008

| AAP

Sunshine Coast kayak great Clint Robinson was seething after Australia’s K4 team produced a disastrous opening performance in his swansong Olympics.

Robinson’s K4 1000 crew of Tate Smith, David Smith and Tony Schumacher finished dead last in their five-boat heat yesterday and were never in the race from the start.

The 36-year-old, who will retire after his fifth Games campaign in Beijing, didn’t hold back after getting off the water with his medal hopes seemingly in tatters at Shunyi.

“Don’t print it, but effing s**thouse,” Robinson assessed last night.

“It was a disaster.

“Nothing went right, we will have to sit down and chat that’s all.

“We’ve got a lot to do.”

Australia languished home in three minutes 00.920 seconds, the second worst time across both heats, and more than three seconds off race winner Germany.

The saving grace for the Australians is the fact only 10 nations are competing in the K4 event and there are nine places in the final.

Robinson rejected assertions they ran dead against the strong German, Hungarian and Belarussian crews – who finished well clear in the heat to qualify straight through to Friday’s final – to gain an extra paddle at Shunyi in tomorrow’s semifinal.

The former ironman also kept to himself the reasons for the major disappointment, which fell well short of his expectations of adding to his three-medal career haul.

“It’s between the four people in the boat, it’s nothing to do with anyone else, it just wasn’t done well enough,” he said.

“That’s not up to scratch for us, we’re better than that. We’re not going to achieve chicken feed with that.”

Robinson, the 1992 Olympic K1 champion as a 19-year-old in Barcelona, had felt the crew’s improving World Cup form, which included a bronze in Germany, would put them up among the world’s top crews in the event.

Crewmate David Smith said the quartet felt uncomfortable in the boat which just didn’t move smoothly.

Tate Smith denied there were any nerves among the three Olympic debutants in their first appearance.

Australia’s women’s K4 500m boat was much happier after coming a close third behind leading nations Hungary and Poland in their heat to go straight through to the final.

National champion Ken Wallace, the world No.4, finished second in his K1 1000m heat to Athens gold medallist Erik Verras Larsen to go through to tomorrow’s semifinal.

Australian C1 paddler Torsten Lachmann will have to progress to his final through a semifinal tomorrow with a top-three finish after coming fifth yesterday.

> The Golden Games: Our Olympians