TWO PAIRS WIN GOLD

ROWING GOLD: Gisborne Rowing Club competitors Oscar Ruston (left) and Sacha Dewancker with their gold medals for the male under-18 double sculls at the North Island Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro. They won the final — raced over two kilometres — by more than 15 seconds. In the single sculls, Ruston finished fourth in the A Final of the men’s senior division and Dewancker finished second in the A Final of the male u18 division. Gisborne Rowing Club also won gold in the men’s senior coxless pair, through Alex Hyland and James Brott. Picture by Light & Motion Photography: Norrie Mailer

ROWING

GISBORNE rowers Sacha Dewancker and Oscar Ruston blitzed the competition to win the male under-18 double sculls by more than 15 seconds at the North Island Rowing Championships.

The pair had been the Gisborne Rowing Club’s “stars” for a while and performed as expected, club president Peter Simmons said.

They dominated, finishing the race in a time of six minutes 56.38 seconds in the final — considerably slower than their heat time of 6:41.71 for the 2000 metres.

Simmons said the duo’s performance at Lake Karapiro had set the targets they needed to hit as they turned their attention towards school regattas such as Maadi Cup.

Ruston, 17, also raced in the men’s senior single sculls to gain experience competing at the highest level.

He finished fourth in the A Final against a field of rowers in the prime of their careers, finishing just over two seconds behind the bronze medallist.

“To see him up there racing with them was great,” Simmons said.

Gisborne rowers performed much better than expected across the board, he said.

“Most A finals were close finishes; we had a lot of fourth and fifth placings.

Gisborne rowers earned two golds, two silvers and a bronze over the weekend.

Men’s senior coxless pair Alex Hyland and James Brott earned the club’s second gold medal, improving from a second-place finish in the qualifying heat to win a tightly contested final.

Silver medals were won by Dewancker in the male u18 single sculls and by the crew of the men’s club coxed eight of Dewancker, Ruston, Hyland, Thom Simmons, Ben McCosh, Jack Notting, Joshua Kelly and Lewis Green, with Phelix Moore as cox.

The women’s club coxless four of Phoebe Naske, Sabine Lapointe, Eva Mirko and Vita Anderson finished third in their A Final.

Gisborne Rowing Club (GRC) had 40 rowers at the North Island Rowing Championships. They formed 39 entries of one, two, four or eight rowers (plus coxswains) racing over the 2000-metre course in either sweep or sculling events.

Most events had heats and semifinals before B and A finals.

The boys’ coach, Luke Jenkins, could not attend the regatta as he was getting ready for his wedding in Gisborne.

Of the nine members of the club’s women’s intermediate coxed octuple sculls crew, four rowers were from the Lapointe family. Mother Danielle joined daughters, Sabine (Gisborne Girls’ High School 2021 head prefect) and 14-year-old twins Tessa and Sophie. During their A final — they finished sixth — the race commentator read out the crew names and speculated on whether they were four sisters made up of two sets of twins.

The senior girls’ coach, Alex Hyland, rows with Jenkins and a few of the club’s older boys in some club category (as opposed to age-group) crews.

At this regatta, Hyland was joined by James Brott for the men’s senior coxless pair, which they won.

Brott has been training at Lake Karapiro with the Regional Performance Centre, Waikato, for the past couple of years while studying at university, but periodically rows for Gisborne Rowing Club.

As the secondary schools national championship regatta (Maadi 2020) was cancelled last year, the older boys decided to aim for the 2021 New Zealand Rowing Championships at Lake Ruataniwha, Twizel, from February 16 to 20. GRC hasn’t had crews competing at the nationals for many years. Nine rowers plus a coxswain will compete in 12 events.

For the rest of the season, rowers will compete for their schools at the North Island secondary schools champs and the secondary schools national championship regatta (Maadi 2021). Around 35 rowers will represent Campion College, Lytton High School, Gisborne Girls’ High, Gisborne Boys’ High and Te Kura Kaupapa Maori o Horouta Wananga.