Richmond-BORN rower Alison Mowbray goes for Olympic gold in the Athens final of the women's quadruple sculls on Sunday morning.

The Great Britain team of Mowbray, Debbie Flood, Frances Houghton and Rebecca Romero were the fastest qualifiers by almost a second and, after winning gold medals at the recent World Cup regattas in Lucerne and Poznan, will start as favourites.

Germany were the only other nation to go straight through to the final, with every other crew having to negotiate an energy-sapping repechage system.

The early rounds are all about striking a balance between qualification and keeping enough in the tank for the final, but Mowbray was delighted to have dispelled all doubts at such an early stage.

"After winning in Lucerne we wanted to show that we are still the boss," said Mowbray, who was a pupil at Richmond School before taking up rowing at Liverpool University. "We wanted to dominate the heat and that's what we did.

"The main thing is that we are now in the final. We wanted to make sure of that."

Russia pushed them hard in the opening stages of last Sunday's qualifier, but the quartet's winning time of 6min 15.60sec was nearly a second quicker than Germany, the reigning world champions.

The quartet are hoping to eclipse the achievements of Katherine Grainger, Guin Batten, Gillian Lindsay and Miriam Batten - the foursome who took bronze in the quadruple sculls event at Sydney four years ago.

* Richmond's other Olympian, swimmer Joanne Jackson, missed out on qualifying for the semi-finals of the women's 400m freestyle.

But she did help the women's 4x200m freestyle relay team qualify for the final as the second fastest quartet. She then made way for Georgina Lee in the final, in which Great Britain finished fifth.