By Paul Daugherty
Enquirer staff writer

ATHENS - The Chinese boxer kept moving. Rau'Shee Warren never quite caught him. Zou Shiming defeated the 17-year-old Cincinnatian 22-9 Wednesday in a first-round bout in the light flyweight division. Warren pressed the issue all four rounds, but his lack of international experience showed.

"I guess I failed," Warren said afterward, "but I'm not going to let it get to my head, because maybe I'll come back."

Warren couldn't adjust to Shiming's darting, dancing style. Shiming, thought to be a medal candidate, was the 2003 world champion in the weight class. He was able to duck Warren's left hand and sidestep Warren's quick rights.

"I'm not used to anybody running like that," Warren said. "My game plan was to come out and pressure him."

Warren trailed only 5-4 after Round 2, but Shiming's ability to counter-punch impressed the judges, and he went ahead 11-6 after three rounds.

As for a run at the 2008 Games, Warren isn't sure.

"I've got a lot of time to think about that," he said.

He'll return in a few weeks to Harmony Community School, where he'll be a senior.

The women's rowing team that includes Cincinnatian Kelly Salchow narrowly advanced to the finals of the quadruple sculls competition Wednesday. Salchow and her teammates finished fourth in the repechage, getting them into the finals, on either Saturday or Sunday.

The crew's time of 6 minutes, 25.39 seconds, was two one-hundredths of a second faster than Denmark's fifth-place mark.

"The length of a hand, probably," was how Salchow described it.

A fifth-place finish would have eliminated the Americans from medal consideration.

"We have to mentally prepare for a really fast final," Salchow said. "We were lucky" to qualify, she said. "The good news is, the places from first to fourth were only a couple seconds apart. We're still with the pack."

The fourth-place finish means the boat will be in one of the outside lanes, not where you want to be. "Strategy?" Salchow said. "The strategy will be to go faster."

Salchow, of Walnut Hills High and UC, was part of a team that finished fifth in the same event in the 2000 Sydney Olympics.

Salchow, who announced plans to retire from rowing after the games, has mixed feelings about the prospect, especially after Wednesday.

"I feel like I'm a better rower now than I was in Sydney four years ago," she said. "I wonder in the back of my mind what it would be like four years from now. Every day you figure things out on the water. I don't know if I'd be retiring before my peak or right at it."

Salchow's boyfriend, Brett Wilkinson of Hyde Park, N.Y., is also competing at the Olympics in rowing. He's part of the men's quadruple sculls team that competes in a semifinal today.

Gannett News Service contributed to this report