Double scullers have twin targets
Olivia Loe and Brooke Donoghue have one eye on the present, the other on the future.
The New Zealand women’s double sculls crew will be one of the favourites to capture gold at the 2017 world rowing championships which start in the United States on Monday morning (NZ time).
That’s despite this being their debut year in the boat together at elite year, as one of a host of changes in the Kiwi team following last year’s Olympic Games regatta in Rio de Janeiro.
Loe and Donoghue won both World Cup regattas they contested in Europe earlier this year as they began their hoped-for campaign towards representing their country at the 2020 Tokyo Olympics after the Rio duo of Zoe Stevenson and Genevieve Behrent both took a year out of the sport.
‘‘ We jump between ‘we want to stay present’ and what we’re trying to achieve this year, but at the end of the day this is something that we want to take to Tokyo and that’s the big goal - it’s always in the back of the mind,’’ Loe acknowledged.
‘‘It’s been a really competitive summer straight off the bat - everyone wanted to get into the top crews and it made everyone better. That obviously was transformed into the way we performed overseas.
‘‘[It’s the] end of an Olympic cycle - if you want to be in Tokyo then you’ve got to start, get your foot in the door and keep it there. I think we wanted to lay down a standard that other people can’t compete with, so that our spots are a bit more secure.’’
Donoghue said the standards set in training and trials by the Rowing NZ elite summer squad put them in good stead for their European sojourn.
‘‘We push each other and against other crews here - and that just lifts our standard as a whole,’’ she said.
‘‘We had our standards set quite high in training and for us it was going out and seeing what we could do. Once we got that first taste of it in Poland with the gold, we were pretty keen to hunt down the next two.’’
Loe, daughter of former All Blacks prop Richard, has been a fringe member of the NZ team in recent years while Donoghue has worked her way through age-group teams and was part of the quad that just missed qualifying for Rio last year.
They teamed up for the first time last summer and were a surprise combination to come through the trials.
‘‘We hadn’t spent a lot of time together,’’ Donoghue said. ‘‘But the time we have over this campaign’s been really valuable and we’ve learned so much together - it’s all come together pretty well.’’
Loe said the most important thing for the duo was making sure their timing and movement was the same ‘‘and that it was super-transferrable between rates and intensities’’.
After their successes in Poland and Switzerland, the duo know they’ll be a target in Bradenton, but the top-level rookies aren’t troubled by that.
‘‘I guess we kind of approach it as business as usual,’’ Loe said.
‘‘We’re sticking to what we do and trying to make our boat the best we can be and I guess it’s just more of an incentive and kind of exciting - we don’t really see it as pressure; more something exciting to chase down.’’