Stern test awaits for new-look Kiwi team
Rowing New Zealand’s fresh approach will get its biggest test of the year when the world champs start in the United States on Monday morning (NZ time).
After an ultimately disappointing Olympic regatta last year, the team to attend the 2017 world champs in SarasotaBradenton, Florida, features a swag of new boat/rower combinations.
The early signs for the Kiwi team have been overwhelmingly positive - New Zealand led the World Cup medal table in Poland with six gold and a silver and repeated that effort in Switzerland.
But as they discovered in Rio, competition jumps up a notable level at the biggest regatta of the international season.
At the Olympics, the wily veterans dealt best with the pressure and tough conditions on the water as Mahe Drysdale and Hamish Bond and Eric Murray were NZ’s only gold medallists, while Rebecca Scown and Genevieve Behrent claimed silver.
Of that quartet, only Scown will be in action in the US while a host of new combinations will look to continue their push towards staying in the boat through to the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
In the men’s single scull, Robbie Manson has already stated he wants to remain in that boat after switching from the double - with Drysdale poised to return this summer seeking a third consecutive Olympic gold. Manson shifted Drysdale out of the record books earlier this year when he recorded the world’s best time in the men’s single scull when winning in Poznan and is likely to start favourite, but will have to see off a high-class field that features Croatia’s Damir Martin - pipped for gold by Drysdale in Rio - and the Czech Republic’s Ondrej Synek, a three-time Olympic medallist and four-time world champ.
Other new boats that excelled at World Cup level include both the women’s and men’s double sculls crews of Chris Harris and John Storey and Olivia Loe and Brooke Donoghue, the men’s pair of Jamie Hunter and Tom Murray and the lightweight women’s double sculls crew of Jackie Kiddle and Zoe McBride.
Storey has replaced Manson in the men’s double and he and Harris won both World Cup events they contested and should fight out the event with Poland, Italy and a Norway crew that features the remarkable 41-year-old Olaf Tufte.
Loe and Donoghue also did the World Cup double and are determined to stake an early claim for Tokyo after 2015 world champions Zoe Stevenson and Eve Macfarlane could only manage 12th in Rio, with both taking a break for 2017.
Hunter and Murray will garner plenty of attention in the men’s pair following the retirement of Eric Murray and Hamish Bond’s current switch to cycling. In their only World Cup appearance, they won gold ahead of Croatia’s Sinkovic brothers; Olympic gold medallists in the double scull last year. The Kiwis will be out to keep the men’s pair world title that Bond and Murray won for the past six world champs.
Kiddle and McBride, who have had success at world under-23 level, won gold in Lucerne in July after Kiddle won gold in Poland in the lightweight single the previous month when McBride was out injured. McBride was a somewhat controversial omission for Rio, where dual world champs Julia Edward and Sophie MacKenzie finished fourth, with that duo also sitting out the 2017 season.
The women’s pair of Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler won world champs silver in 2015 but were usurped in the boat for Rio by Scown and Behrent while Prendergast and Gowler were in the eight which finished fourth in Rio. They haven’t missed a beat back in the pair this year, winning at both World Cups they contested, including setting a new world’s best time.
The women’s eight were disappointed not to make the podium in Rio and that will be their goal in the US, with a slightly rejigged crew up against a host of tough opponents including the hosts US, Great Britain and Romania.