Manson’s focus now on gold

A confident Robbie Manson now eyes world champs gold after seeing off the challenge of Mahe Drysdale.

Manson won gold in style at the final World Cup regatta of the season in Lucerne, Switzerland, on Sunday night to seal his spot as New Zealand’s men’s single scull representative at the 2018 world champs in Bulgaria in September.

Manson finished well ahead of fourth-placed Drysdale as he rowed past current world champion and three-time Olympic medallist Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic – who almost lost his oar shortly after halfway – to romp home. Manson’s winning time of six minutes 55.30 seconds was more than four seconds ahead of silver medallist Oliver Zeidler of Germany, with Synek third and Drysdale fourth, almost seven seconds behind Manson.

‘‘I’ve been a lot faster than Mahe all year and it’s good to just go out there and be able to keep the same margin that I’ve had all year,’’ Manson said.

Now Manson wants gold in Plovdiv, after a disappointing effort at last year’s world champs when a build-up hampered by injury played a part in him being unable to reproduce the kind of form that saw him set a world’s best time during World Cup season.

‘‘It’d be good to do what I didn’t manage to do last year. Obviously it’ll be tough – Synek always gets up at the world champs so you can’t take too much from what he did today,’’ Manson said.

Manson admitted there was a lot riding on his World Cup campaign, with he and Drysdale seeking to be NZ’s world champs single sculler and stake an early claim towards the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.

Drysdale will now sit out the world champs but told Stuff earlier that he would continue to push towards Tokyo no matter what happened in Europe.

Manson doesn’t expect a similar situation will arise next year, with the NZ domestic season likely to decide superiority.

‘‘I think he’s [Drysdale’s] had a bit of a lifeline this year – I don’t imagine it’ll be exactly the same as it is this year, but I don’t know what he’s going to do. I imagine he’s going to hang around and try and get back in the single one way or another.

‘‘I’ve got to keep doing what I can do and get as fast as I can go – that’s my only focus.’’

Manson said he didn’t let the head-to-head battle steal his focus.

‘‘You can only control what you can do so that’s been my key thing – going as well as I can go.

‘‘I’ve just done what we usually do and done the same training the rest of the team has done – I wouldn’t say that I’ve prepared any differently for this regatta.

Manson said he felt ‘‘really confident’’ going into the final.

‘‘I felt like I got better and better each race over the weekend and I had a really good training block the last couple of weeks. You can never be 100 per cent sure but I trusted the training I’ve done.’’

New Zealand boats won six medals at Lucerne – five gold via Manson, the women’s eight, women’s double scull, women’s pair and men’s pair, and silver in the lightweight women’s double sculls.