Hawe and her crew ready to win again

SARAH Hawe and her women’s four crewmates will defend their world title in Bulgaria this weekend after advancing into the final.

Hawe, the reigning Tasmanian athlete of the year alongside lawn bowler Rebecca Van Asch, combined with Molly Goodman, Katrina Werry and Lucy Stephan to recover from a slow start to book their spot in the final.

The quartet will join the reigning world champions men’s four in defending their title, while the men’s quad scull and PR3 (para-rowing) mixed coxed four also had wins to progress to the medal races.

The Australian women were off the pace early and found themselves back in fifth after 500m.

However, with Goodman upping the stroke rate as the crews approached the final 300m, the crew made its move on second-placed Russia and began to challenge the Americans. With 100m to go the Australians were in second but had run out of water to take the win, but it mattered little having secured direct passage into the final.

The men’s crew of Rio Olympic silver-medallist Alexander Hill and Jack Hargreaves, Spencer Turrin and Joshua Hicks made a statement in their semi-final.

They got off to a flying start and led until the finish, holding off a last-ditch challenge from the Dutch crew.

In a thrilling men’s quad sculls repechage, Australia’s outfit of David Watts, Alex Purnell, Campbell Watts and Caleb Antill held off challenges from reigning world champions Lithuania and New Zealand to cross the line in first place.

“After the heat we knew we could be in the mix. Lithuania obviously won the world championships last year, while New Zealand have the experience of Olympic gold-medallist Mahe Drysdale in their crew,” Watts said. “We always knew we’d have a good race on our hands. We wanted to execute our best race plan and it paid off today, it’s probably the best execution we’ve done so far, which is exciting leading into the final.”

Hawe is not the only Tasmanian chasing gold this weekend, with Ciona Wilson part of the women’s eight which won their heat on Wednesday to move directly into tomorrow’s final.