Timing the issue
FIGURING out how to be the best in the world at exactly the right time may be the next big target for Rowing New Zealand.
Entering the final day of the regatta at the 2016 Olympic Games in Rio de Janeiro, Kiwi rowers had picked up two medals, with the prospect of possibly three more this morning (NZ time).
That would give Rowing NZ the five medals it and chief financial backers High Performance Sport New Zealand had set, to ensure the sport remained at the top of the tier one-funded codes.
But there still may be a feeling of what should have been after a number of genuine gold medal contenders failed to make the podium in Rio.
Yesterday, the NZ lightweight women’s double sculls crew of Julia Edward and Sophie MacKenzie finished fourth in the Olympic final, about five boat lengths behind the winners from the Netherlands. Edward and MacKenzie had won the past two world championship gold medals.
Earlier in the regatta, the defending world champions in the women’s double sculls, Zoe Stevenson and Eve Macfarlane, failed to make the A final while the NZ lightweight men’s four who had won both World Cup events they contested this year – with reserve Matthew Dunham in the boat for an injured Peter Taylor – could only manage fifth in their A final.
No-one will ask tougher questions of the rowers and the programme than the athletes, coaches and management at Rowing NZ as to why some top crews fell short of expectations.
Edward said she and her crewmate couldn’t have been better prepared for the pinnacle event.
‘‘We were definitely peaking for Rio, this is probably the fittest we’ve ever been,’’ she told NZ Newswire soon after the light- weight women’s double scull final. ‘‘We were confident coming in and felt really strong. We have absolutely no regrets about our training, it’s just the nature of the Olympics.’’
Taylor, a bronze medallist in the lightweight men’s double with Storm Uru at the 2012 London Olympics, was at a loss to explain why the highly-regarded Kiwi quartet couldn’t claim a medal.
‘‘I am absolutely shattered that we couldn’t put out our best performance on the biggest week, when it mattered most,’’ Taylor wrote on his Facebook page.
‘‘On a positive note, I can say that I couldn’t be more thankful to work with such a highly motivated, disciplined, hard working, no cutting corners crew. It leaves me scratching my head as to how it all unfolded this way.’’
New Zealand headed the medal table at the 2014 world championships, claiming nine medals PHOTOSPORT (seven in Olympic classes) in Amsterdam and repeated that effort in Aiguebelette last year.
New Zealand claimed their second medal of the regatta when Genevieve Behrent and Rebecca Scown won silver behind defending Olympic champions Helen Glover and Heather Stanning of Great Britain in the women’s pair. It was a second Olympic medal for Scown, who won bronze with Juliette Haigh in London 2012.