Richard Archibald will compete in the Beijing Olympics

Richard Archibald and his Irish team-mates have qualified for the Beijing Olympics by finishing second in the lightweight fours final in Poznan.

Coleraine man Archibald and the other members of his quartet came home behind Germany in their Olympic qualifier in Poland on Wednesday morning.

"This is a huge relief as it is what we have been aiming for and expecting.

"We are now focused on getting to the A final in Beijing in August and also winning a medal," said Archibald.

"We finished sixth last time so anything less than that would be a failure.

"I am really honoured to be going to the Olympics, and it is good that Richard (Chambers) and Alan (Campbell) will be going as well.

"We have had to up our displays after some poor performances last year and this is a major hurdle overcome.

"Our season, and possibly our careers, were over if we had not qualified and it was good to have a strong race in the final and be competitive against the Germans.

"While have had a good season's training and we wanted to qualify, but we did not want to make this the biggest peak of our season as we want to keep our best for Beijing. That was quite challenging."

The Irish won their heat on Monday which meant that they avoided having to compete in Tuesday's repechage.

Germany won Monday morning's other first-round heat.

Archibald was part of an crew that claimed world championship silver and bronze in 2005 and 2006 but the Irish boat struggled badly in 2007 and found themselves in the unlikely position of still having to qualify for Beijing.

Meanwhile, Ireland's heavyweight pair of Sean Casey and Jonno Devlin and lightweight double of Eugene and Richard Coakley both missed out on a place in Wednesday's finals.

Casey and Devlin finished fourth the semi-finals on Tuesday while the Coakley's could only manage fifth in their semi.

Both crews needed to be in the top three in the semi-finals to progress to the finals and keep their hopes of qualifying for the Olympics alive.

With no more Olympic qualification opportunities Casey and Devlin will now focus on selection for the Irish heavyweight men's four boat.

The crew has has already qualified for the Beijing and will race at the World Cup in Poznan later this week.