Rowing: No soft entry for Kiwis at world champs

Rowing coach Dick Tonks. Photo / Christine Cornege

Rowing New Zealand won't be tempted to load the world championships at Lake Karapiro with black-singleted crews just to capitalise on hosting the event.

It is 32 years since the worlds were last held in New Zealand, at the same venue, but only crews with a realistic expectation of making their A final will get the nod from the national selectors for the October 30-November 7 event.

"We won't just put crews in for the sake of putting them in," head coach Dick Tonks said yesterday. "They'll have to reach a standard to start. Nobody's going to come to the racing to watch them go out the back door."

A list of trialists will be named on Thursday for assessment next week by the selectors, Conrad Robertson, Athol Earl and Tonks, before finalising the world championship squad.

That will give an opportunity for those who missed the initial selection trials in March through injury to put up their hands, and allows the selectors the chance to improve on the crews who contested the World Cup circuit in Europe recently.

But several crews are unlikely to be obliged to trial.

The two coxless pair combinations who won both their World Cup regattas, Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, and Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown, and four-time world single scull champion Mahe Drysdale and world lightweight double scullers Storm Uru and Peter Taylor, should be be exempt on the basis that they have earned their places and are unchallenged in their seats.

"A lot won't be required at the trials," Tonks said. "It's just to see if we can make some crews faster. It doesn't mean we will make changes to any of the crews but it's an opportunity to see if we can improve them."

Performances at the world under-23 championships in Belarus will be under scrutiny too. Five of the six New Zealand crews made A finals, with silver medals going to lightweight double scullers Lucy Strack of Otago and Rotorua's Julia Edward and the women's eight.

"They're pretty good results overall, really," Tonks said. "They were up on the pace and competing with the Europeans and that's what we want. Some of these crews are pretty young."

Strack and Edward have been in good form all season and there is a group of promising athletes in that category, while the eight did well to finish behind only the United States.

And that raises the intriguing prospect of whether the eight are doing enough to justify world championship selection.

There is talk of a men's eight being named as well, although Tonks said a coxless four would almost certainly be fielded at the worlds, therefore an eight would need to come from rowers effectively No's 5-13 in the country.

"There's no guarantee of a [men's] eight. The whole thing is up in the air until the trials," Tonks said. They run from next Monday to Friday.

Broadly speaking, Tonks is satisfied with progress towards the world champs.

"We're never entirely happy because we always want to be going faster and have more crews doing well."

New Zealand will go into the worlds with Drysdale, Murray and Bond, and Uru and Taylor defending their titles, with Duncan Grant in the non-Olympic lightweight single scull class.