National rowing team tilts toward the Island

They met the gold standard last time, so let’s try it again.

Caileigh Filmer of Victoria and Hillary Janssens of the UBC Thunderbirds, champions in the first World Cup rowing event of the season last month in Belgrade, will reprise their roles in the women’s pair event for the World Cup regatta July 13-15 in Lucerne, Switzerland.

The national team roster for the Lucerne World Cup, consisting of nine crews, was announced Wednesday by Victoria-based Rowing Canada.

Filmer, a Mount Douglas Secondary graduate rowing for the University of Victoria Vikes, was the youngest member of the 2016 Canadian Olympic team in Rio at age 19.

UVic is also well represented in the Canadian women’s eight in Lucerne, with Vikes Avalon Wasteneys of Campbell River and Rebecca Zimmerman joining Sydney Payne out of Brentwood College along with 2017 world championship silver-medallist veterans Christine Roper, Susanne Grainger and Lisa Roman.

Andrea Proske of Victoria City Rowing Club and Gabrielle Smith of Knowlton Club will represent Canada in the women’s double scull. Veterans Kai Langerfeld of Parksville, an Olympian, and Martin Barakso from Nanaimo, out of Brentwood College and Princeton, will lead the Canadian men’s eight to be coxed by UVic’s Jane Gumley.

Patrick Keane from the UVic Vikes and Maxwell Lattimer of the UBC Thunderbirds will be looking to take that one extra stroke to the podium in the men’s lightweight double after placing a promising fourth in World Cup 1 in Belgrade.

More than 600 rowers from 37 nations will compete in Lucerne, considered the most prestigious World Cup stop.

“These athletes have undergone a very challenging and intense selection process,” said Iain Brambell of Brentwood Bay, a 2008 Beijing Olympic medallist who is now the Rowing Canada high-performance director.

The big prize for the year is the 2018 FISA world championships from Sept. 9-16 in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, with the ultimate goal the 2020 Tokyo Olympic Games.

“There is an excitement growing within the Canadian team and I look forward to seeing this energy harnessed during the final World Cup in Lucerne,” Brambell said.