Ben Taylor and Oli Welch have put the rest of the world on notice at the Bosbaan in Amsterdam, winning their men’s pair semi-final at the world rowing championships overnight and clocking the fastest time of the round. The defending world champions crossed in 6min 39.99sec, nearly two seconds clear of Australia, with Romania third. They now line up in Friday’s A final as the crew everybody else has to beat.
The race followed the pattern the Christchurch pair have made their own this season. They took the lead off the start, stretched the margin past two seconds by halfway, held about three seconds at the 1500 metre mark and then sat on it rather than emptying the tank. Italy won the other semi-final roughly three seconds slower than the New Zealanders managed, which tells you most of what you need to know about where the medal is heading unless something changes.
Welch told RNZ the quick getaway is not an accident. “I think we’re naturally quite quick out of the blocks. We’re quite explosive in the gym so it lends itself to a quick start. From there, we just try to control the race from the front.”
He was less forthcoming about what the pair have left in reserve. “Don’t want to give it away. The final will definitely be exciting, they’ll be going for it even more, and so will we.”
Taylor, 26, and Welch, 23, both row out of the Avon Rowing Club under coach Mike Rodger, and their partnership is barely 18 months old. They raced together for the first time at the New Zealand championships in February 2025 and by September were world champions in Shanghai, winning in 6min 37.87sec ahead of Romania and Switzerland. It was the first New Zealand world title in the men’s pair since Hamish Bond and Eric Murray stepped out of the boat, which is a heavy piece of history for two rowers who had never previously stood on a senior world championship podium.
They have been even better in 2026. In its championship preview, World Rowing wrote that “the New Zealanders have been the outstanding crew of 2026, enough to secure the overall World Rowing Cup title before the final regatta”. They had the series won with a round to spare and skipped Lucerne altogether, which means Amsterdam is the first real test of whether a dominant World Cup season converts into a second world title. The most obvious threat comes from across the Tasman. World Rowing noted that “Australia won at World Cup III with the incredibly talented Alex Hill in the boat”, and Hill and Angus Dawson were the crew chasing Taylor and Welch home in the semi-final.
The rest of the New Zealand team has had a more mixed regatta. Ben Mason and Finn Hamill finished fifth in their men’s double sculls semi-final and drop to the B final, having trailed Great Britain by close to three seconds with 500 metres to run. Katie Lush and Juliette Lequeux were fourth in the women’s pair semi-final in 7min 40.56sec and also go to the B final. Eva Hofmans and Sophie Egnot-Johnson, in their first season together, came sixth in the women’s double sculls C final, and the women’s quad of Stella Clayton-Greene, Olivia Hay, Rebecca Leigh and Veronica Wall are in the C final after finishing fourth in their heat.
Kathryn Glen has been carrying the women’s single sculls on her own after a stress reaction in a rib kept her out of the World Cup circuit. She was fifth in her heat and moved through to the quarter-finals. “I feel like it’s a bit of a once in a lifetime opportunity to say that you’re the women’s single (sculler), so just trying to embrace that while I’m here,” she told RNZ.
The men’s four is the crew worth watching for the longer game. Matt Macdonald, Oliver Maclean, Fred Vavasour and Harry Fitzpatrick finished third in their heat behind the United States and France, beaten by two hundredths of a second for second place after a strong last 800 metres. Vavasour and Fitzpatrick only made their senior debuts this year, having taken silver at the under 23 world championships in 2025. Maclean, back in the boat after the Paris Olympics, told Boating New Zealand that “I wasn’t sure after Paris if I was going to come back”, and described the group as “a pretty fresh crew, but it’s an exciting project”. Their A final is on Saturday. The women’s four of Alana Sherman, Isla Blake, Kate Haines and Ella Cossill also came third in their heat and progressed.
Rowing New Zealand has entered both eights, and it has done so by asking the same athletes to row twice. The named team puts Taylor and Welch into the men’s eight alongside the four, with Joshua Vodanovich and Campbell Crouch filling the gaps and Oliver Duncan steering. The women’s eight is built from the four and the quad with Harry Molloy in the coxswain’s seat. The eights race their heats on Saturday and their finals on Sunday, so anyone who medals earlier in the weekend will be doing it again the next day.
The regatta itself is a big one. World Rowing says more than 830 athletes from 64 nations are racing across 23 boat classes over seven days, with the first medal races starting on Thursday. Amsterdam runs on UTC plus two, so New Zealand viewers need to add 10 hours. Going by the published timetable, the men’s pair A final goes at 4.41pm on Friday in Amsterdam, which is 2.41am on Saturday here. The men’s four final follows at 9.38pm on Saturday New Zealand time and the women’s four 13 minutes later. The men’s eight final is due at 11.38pm on Sunday.
None of that guarantees anything. Pairs racing is unforgiving, the Bosbaan has already served up a headwind this week, and a crew that has led every race it has entered this season has never had to work out how to win one from behind. But Taylor and Welch have now been the fastest boat in the field at every stage of this championship, and they have a habit of making the hard part look ordinary.
Will Taylor and Welch defend their world title in Amsterdam, and which other New Zealand crew do you rate this weekend? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think.
This article was written by AI, briefed to report the facts, hopefully without some of the bias people bring to the job π
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