RIO DE JANEIRO -- The sprint canoe/kayak team are hoping the blooding of Olympic debutants Riley Fitzsimmons and Jordan Wood will see Australia return to gold medal-winning ways after a disappointing return in Rio.The 13-strong team arrived in Brazil feeling they were in the hunt for three medals, including defending the gold medal they won in the mens K4 1000m in London.But that crew finished in fourth position, with the only medal coming in the mens K2 1000m through Lachlan Tame and veteran Ken Wallace, who now has three Olympic medals to his name.Team leader Richard Fox said they had hoped for more from the key boats, who race over the one kilometre distance.Overall the outcomes not as good as we wanted, Fox said.We got one bronze and two fourths so its not a complete disaster but its still measured as below par.Germany were convincing gold medallists in both the mens K2 and K4 1000m events which Fox said could be put down to the talent of Max Rendschmidt and Marcus Gross, who competed in both, as well as their strong program.He believed Olympic success was cyclical and with 20-year-old Fitzsimmons and Wood, 24, and the son of Olympic medallists Anna Wood and the late Steve Wood, it could be Australias turn again in Tokyo.The renewal that weve seen in the group is encouraging and thats going to inspire the next group to go forward and hopefully be back in Tokyo with a vengeance, Fox said.Their debut finishing in fourth place is nothing to be disappointed about really in the bigger picture.Fox said a review of the program would consider whether the Australians were focusing too much on world cup success at the expense of Olympic goals, and it would also look to improve the female representation after the womens K4 failed to qualify.We might need a longer build-up to a bigger peak as we havent lifted to a higher level here as a couple of others have, he said. ALMATY, Kazakhstan -- Four days after shutting down work at the Olympic drug-test laboratory in Rio de Janeiro, the World Anti-Doping Agency has suspended another lab, this time in Kazakhstan.WADA said on Tuesday that the lab in Almaty had its accreditation suspended for four months as of this past Friday as a direct result of the more stringent quality assessment procedures enacted by WADA.WADA did not say how exactly the Almaty lab failed to pass such an assessment.In addition to announcing a suspension for the Rio lab also on Friday, a move that plunged Olympic drug testing into uncertainty, WADA has also suspended labs in China, Spain, South Africa and Portugal this year.The lab in Moscow lost its accreditation altogether after accusations that its former director helped to cover up doping by Russian athletes, sparking a round of new checks at other labs worldwide.ddddddddddddThe Almaty lab reportedly opened in 2003 and is one of the lesser-known of the 35 labs approved worldwide by WADA. Last week, Kazakhstan Prime Minister Karim Massimov was quoted by local media as ordering officials to find private sponsors to finance an upgrade of the facilities.That came shortly after four Kazakh gold medalists in weightlifting from the 2012 Olympics were announced to have failed retests of their samples. They stand to lose their medals. ' ' '
