After a restless night, James Tomkins' Australian men's eight overcame their heats hiccup to advance to the Olympic final in style yesterday.
Flag bearer Tomkins and his crew finished second behind the United States in the repechage to qualify for the medal showdown.
''The whole season comes to this,'' 42-year-old Tomkins said of Sunday's final.
''It's nothing to be fearful of. Now is the time to enjoy it. Now is the time to bring it all together, let it rip and see what happens.''
The six-time Olympian said it had occurred to him that yesterday could have been his Olympic swansong.
''It had me fairly wound up as you can imagine, but now we've got ... five days or something until the final so we can actually relax and do some proper kilometres on the course and just really wind it down, smell the roses again and start to build it up again,'' he said.
Coxswain Marty Rabjohns from Goulburn said the crew had a new system installed in the boat after Monday's rudder malfunction that could have had them rubbed out of the race altogether.
''It was a really hard 24 hours for me particularly,'' Rabjohns said.
''The equipment is sort of my equipment. I've been involved in over a thousand races and that's never happened so I didn't get too many hours sleep last night.
''There was a little bit of thinking going on upstairs so it's good to go through today.''
The Australians had prepared to race three times on Monday after their heat was initially delayed by an impending storm and then the mishap which caused them to veer into the neighbouring lane and brought them within a metre of hitting eventual winners Canada. Yesterday Rabjohns and crew David Dennis, Samuel Loch, James Chapman, Tom Laurich, Jeremy Stevenson, Sam Conrad and Stephen Stewart made sure that didn't happen again.
They threw down the challenge to the Americans with a strong third quarter of the race that had Australia in the lead with 500m to go.
But the USA out-sprinted Australia over the closing stages to finish 1.36sec clear of the Australians.
''Racing repechages and semi-finals is the hardest racing we do, just from a mental point of view and and emotional point of view, so it's really good to come through,'' Rabjohns said.
''We had a good run down the track and we're excited about Sunday.''
Britain joined Canada as direct finalists on Monday, while the Netherlands and Poland also qualified through the repechage along with Australia and the US.
The Australian women's quadruple scull of Zoe Uphill, Amber Bradley, Kerry Hore and Amy Ives reached their final after finishing third in a repechage.
Germany won the race to also advance along with the second-placed United States.
Sam Beltz and Tom Gibson continued Australia's strong showing when they reached the semi-finals of the lightweight double sculls with a second placing behind Germans Jonathan Koch and Manuel Brehmer in their repechage.
Women's pair Kim Crow and Sarah Cook finished a disappointing third behind New Zealand and Britain to miss the cut in their event. - AAP