New Zealand’s rowers have made a powerful statement on the way to August’s world championships, collecting five medals on the final day of the second World Rowing Cup regatta in Plovdiv, Bulgaria, with the men’s pair coming within a whisker of one of the sport’s longest standing records.
Oliver Welch and Ben Taylor took the only gold of the day for New Zealand in the coxless pair, and they did it in a way that turned heads well beyond the home crowd. The reigning world champions crossed the line just 0.54 seconds outside the world best time of six minutes 8.50 seconds set by Hamish Bond and Eric Murray at the 2012 London Olympics, a mark that has stood untouched for 14 years and is widely regarded as one of the great rows in the history of the boat class.
For a pairing still building towards the back end of the season, getting that close to the Bond and Murray standard at a mid season World Cup was a notable result. Welch was quick to point out that conditions were not perfect, telling reporters the race “got a bit messy” and that “the course definitely kind of slowed down” over the second half. Even so, the time put the rest of the field on notice and confirmed the partnership as the crew to beat in the pair heading into the championship regatta.
The gold was the highlight, but it was far from the only bright spot for the New Zealand team. Three silver medals and a bronze rounded out a haul of five, spread across both sweep and sculling boats and across the men’s and women’s squads, which is exactly the sort of spread the high performance programme wants to see at this stage of an Olympic cycle.
In the men’s double sculls, Finn Hamill and Ben Mason claimed silver behind Croatia’s Martin and Valent Sinkovic, the most decorated double in the world. For Hamill and Mason the jump in form was striking. Only a fortnight earlier at the opening World Cup they had been racing in the C Final, well off the podium, so to come back and split the very best crews in the world for a silver showed how quickly the combination is maturing.
The women’s sweep squad also delivered, with the coxless four of Alana Sherman, Isla Blake, Kate Haines and Ella Cossill taking silver. They finished just over a boat length behind a dominant United States crew, with Italy a length further back in bronze. The Americans were the standout of the regatta and topped the overall medal table, so to be the closest crew to them was a strong measure of where the New Zealand four sits internationally.
New Zealand’s women added a second silver in the quadruple sculls, where Olivia Hay, Stella Clayton-Greene, Beckie Leigh and Veronica Wall stopped the clock at six minutes 17.27 seconds. The quad pushed hard through the middle of the race, at one point trading the lead with China bowball to bowball, before settling for second in a quality field.
The final medal came in the men’s four, where Fred Vavasour, Campbell Crouch, Harry Fitzpatrick and Josh Vodanovich rowed to bronze. They were in the fight for silver until the closing metres before Romania edged ahead in the final strokes, a reminder of how fine the margins are at this level when several crews arrive in the last 250 metres with a chance.
Taken together, the five medals point to a team in good health across a range of boat classes rather than one leaning on a single star crew. That depth matters. The programme has spent years rebuilding after the retirements of a golden generation, and a regatta where pairs, fours, doubles and quads all reach the podium is the kind of result that suggests the system is producing genuine options rather than just one or two world class crews.
The result also carries weight because of the company New Zealand kept on the podium. Beating or pushing crews such as the Sinkovic brothers, the in form United States women and a strong Chinese quad is a far better gauge of progress than a medal won against a thin field. Conditions in Plovdiv were quick early in the regatta, which produced fast times through the heats and semifinals before the breeze shifted on finals day, and the New Zealanders handled the changing water as well as anyone.
Attention now turns home. The squad returns to New Zealand for a period of seat racing, the brutal internal trialling process where athletes are swapped between boats and timed head to head to settle who rows in which crew. Those results will shape the line ups that head to the world championships in Amsterdam in August, the major target of the season and the next significant marker on the road towards the Los Angeles Olympics.
For Welch and Taylor, the pair looks settled and dangerous. For the rest of the squad, the seat racing will decide a good deal. But on the evidence of Plovdiv, New Zealand will travel to the Netherlands with more than one boat capable of contending for a place on the dais. You can read more on the regatta via the NZ Herald, RNZ and the Otago Daily Times.
Did you watch the rowing from Plovdiv, and how do you rate this crew’s chances in Amsterdam and beyond? Share your thoughts in the comments below.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job 🙂
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