Golden goodbye from Twigg

The single sculler ended a perfect season with world champs gold, writes Ian Anderson ‘‘It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can finally let my hair down and celebrate.’’

Emma Twigg has left Rowing New Zealand with the most emphatic forgetme-not.

The women’s single sculler won her first world championship gold in Amsterdam yesterday ahead of a study sabbatical that is set to leave her employers without Twigg to qualify the boat for the 2016 Olympics at next year’s world champs in France.

Twigg capped the perfect season with a powerful victory over defending champion Kim Crow, of Australia, to claim her maiden world champs gold to accompany a silver and two bronze in previous years.

The 27-year-old had earlier won gold at all three World Cup regattas this year in Sydney, Aiguebelette and Lucerne, and again proved too strong for the Australian, taking the lead before the halfway stage and establishing a winning break. Twigg’s victory time of 7:14.95 was almost two and a half seconds quicker than the silver medallist.

Twigg will now head to study in Europe and may miss the entire 2015 season – including Olympic qualifying at next year’s world champs, which would leave the task of qualifying the women’s single scull boat in the hands of an inferior sculler.

Twigg had hoped Rowing NZ would still include her in the squad so she could possibly attend the final World Cup regatta of 2015 and the subsequent world champs, as she intended to train while studying for a Fifa Master in Management, Law and Humanities of Sport in England, Italy and Switzerland.

But she’s been told that she can only be part of the team if she trains throughout the campaign in NZ.

‘‘I’m not too phased about it – no doubt we’ll reassess thing next year and hopefully the result today will help my cause in terms of next year and what happens.

‘‘I’m looking forward to combining the two [studying and rowing] and coming back even stronger and having a focus for 15 months leading into Rio should Rowing New Zealand take me back.’’

Twigg was understandably delighted with her significant win.

‘‘It’s like a weight has been lifted off my shoulders and I can finally let my hair down and celebrate,’’ she said. ‘‘It’s been a long time coming – 2005 was my junior world champs medal, and it’s been almost 10 years since then. They say it takes 10 years, or 10,000 hours so . . . it’s a great feeling to finally be at the top of the podium.

‘‘The team’s had an amazing world champs – we’re top of the medal table and some performances have been spectacular. It was a lovely way to finish off the week.’’

Crow often likes to dictate terms from the front, but Twigg didn’t let that happen in Amsterdam.

‘‘To be honest, I just raced my own race today, and I knew if I did that then I’d come out on the right side of it,’’ Twigg said.

‘‘Kim was ahead at one stage, but it was a matter of keeping cool and the last thousand metres was where I did my work. That’s how it panned out and at the end I was hanging on for dear life but it was all good.

‘‘It’s been a really great year and I have had a little bit of a different focus. I’ve been enjoying my training.

‘‘I think the medal can be split in three for [physiologist] Dan Plews and [coach] Gary Hay as well. They’ve been great and set up an awesome training programme and environment for me.

‘‘I’ll be eternally grateful to those guys and hopefully we can continue that in the future. Having a different focus has been awesome – it’s been quite relaxed, knowing that no matter what happens at this world champs I’ve got something to do next year. But I’m happy with today and excited about the future, so we’ll see what happens.’’

The New Zealand team topped the medal table at the world champs with six gold, two silver and one bronze, after being set a target of five medals.

That made it the most successful world championship event in New Zealand’s rowing history as the team backed up their World Cup series win.

Chasing his sixth world championship title, men’s single sculler Mahe Drysdale staged a tense battle with his fierce onwater rival and off-water friend Ondrej Synek, of the Czech Republic.

The 35-year-old Kiwi looked likely to land gold with 200m left, but Synek dug deep to go past Drysdale and win in a sharp 6:37.12; a margin of victory of 0.68 seconds.

‘‘I had a couple of glances to see where Ondrej was to try to get through him but he was just too good,’’ Drysdale said.

Rowing New Zealand will now name a high performance summer squad on September 10 to start training on September 29.