Male crews provide selection quandary
While New Zealand’s top women’s rowers continue to solidify their places for the Tokyo Olympics, the men’s spots remain murky.
Most of Rowing NZ’s summer squad that are pushing for places in the national team ahead of the 2020 Olympic Games were in action at the justcompleted North Island club championships at Lake Karapiro .
There’s little doubt over the make-up of the small boats for the Kiwi women – Emma Twigg will be in the single scull, while defending world champions Kerri Gowler and Grace Prendergast (pair) and Brooke Donoghue and Olivia Loe (double scull) are automatic selections.
Twigg was pushed hard in the premier single final on Monday by Donoghue, while lightweight Jackie Kiddle also impressed by taking bronze ahead of Loe.
Donoghue and Loe won their specialist event by over five seconds while Gowler and Prendergast headed home Jackie Gowler and Ella Greenslade in the pair’s finals. The Gowler sisters and Prendergast teamed up with Beth Ross to win the fours and the decision is yet to be made as to whether the best pair in the world will also be part of the world champion eight in Tokyo.
However, greater uncertainty surrounds the men’s smaller boats.
Robbie Manson again triumphed in a domestic regatta in the single scull, winning the premier final in which he pipped John Storey by just .09s – indicating that Storey could be a contender for selection in the single.
Two-time defending Olympic champion Mahe Drysdale failed to make the final after finishing fifth in his heat.
Manson has been New Zealand’s representative in the men’s single since Drysdale’s second Olympic gold in Rio in 2016 but has been disappointing at the past three world championships. After missing out on the A final in Austria last year, Manson said he would re-assess his options ahead of the 2020 Tokyo Olympics.
That could include the double scull and on Monday he and Jordan Parry joined forces to beat the national team incumbents Storey and Chris Harris by 2.33s. Parry was part of the men’s quad that narrowly missed automatic qualification for Tokyo at last year’s world champs, with the boat now to contest a ‘last chance’ qualifying regatta in Lucerne in May.