New boats score rapid success on world stage

Any fears a lack of star power may give Rowing New Zealand a postolympic hangover have been rapidly washed away.

Six gold medals and a silver at the final World Cup regatta of the year last week capped a hugely successful European campaign for the NZ team that was trying a host of new boat combinations.

The Kiwi team was without its only gold medal winners from Rio – single sculler Mahe Drysdale and the men’s pair of Hamish Bond and Eric Murray, with Drysdale taking a year off, Bond attempting to switch to cycling for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics and Murray retired. A number of previous world champions also took a season off, so the NZ team that contested the second and third World Cups in Poland and Switzerland and the Henley Royal Regatta featured eight boats that were untested at world senior level.

The team emerged decorated with gongs and while replicating that success at the 2017 world championships in Sarasota, United States, at the end of September will be tougher, the first step towards the next Olympic Games has been a big stride.

The New Zealand team to contest the world champs will be chosen after trials in August, with very few changes to the boat personnel in Europe expected. However, there may be some additions – NZ boats contested 10 of the 14 Olympic classes at the World Cup regattas.

Those events confirmed New Zealand’s standing as a world rowing superpower with impressive depth. Rowing writer Daniel Spring pointed out New Zealand’s post-olympic year performance have improved notably and continually this century when accounting for their results at the final World Cup regatta of the year following the Games.

In Olympic-class events in 1997, NZ claimed a sole bronze; silver and bronze in 2001 and a gold and two silver in 2005. In 2009, that jumped to four gold, a silver and a bronze, while the team claimed three gold, two silver and a bronze in 2013.

Robbie Manson played a starring role, replacing Drysdale in the men’s single scull seat with aplomb and making the expected return to action of the two-time Olympic champion this summer already much-anticipated. Manson, who wants to be in the single at Tokyo, won both World Cup events and set a new worldbest time in Poznan, removing Drysdale’s previous best from the record books.

He was one of four NZ boats that won both their World Cup appearances, with the women’s pair, women’s double sculls and men’s double sculls also claiming two golds while lightweight women’s sculler Jackie Kiddle won gold on her own in Poland and in partnership in Lucerne with Zoe Mcbride.

The women’s pair of Kerri Gowler and Grace Prendergast, world champs in 2015, resumed their partnership in emphatic fashion. The duo lost their seats for Rio to Rebecca Scown and Genevieve Behrent, who won Olympic silver, but with Behrent taking this season off, Gowler and Prendergast again staked their claim. They didn’t double up in the eight as they did in 2015 and Scown and Behrent did in Rio, and that system may stay in place for the world champs, with Scown again guiding the eight that had a win in Poland and silver in Switzerland.