KEY POINTS:
Rowing is all about going backwards fastest but don't tell that to New Zealand's new high performance manager Alan Cotter.
The tight-knit, successful New Zealand core of the past five years has shown signs of serious fraying since the Beijing Olympics but former international cox Cotter isn't rattled.
Instead, it's heads down and oars at the ready for the next four years, with the 2012 London Games already looming at the end of his lane.
Anyone observing the New Zealand summer training squad currently going through their paces on Lake Karapiro may not share Cotter's optimism.
Back from the 16-strong Olympic rowing team are just Hamish Bond, Nathan Cohen, Emma Twigg and the lightweight double of Storm Uru and Peter Taylor. Alongside them are the cream of the country's age group talent.
Not there for the first time in nine years are retired Olympics double gold medal-winning sculling sisters Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell.
Nicky Coles has also retired but those are the only three Beijing rowers who have dropped from Cotter's radar as he plans for the next Olympics.
" We've still got the bulk of them in the mix and wanting to go through to London," he told NZPA.
"Even though many of them aren't in our training squad, I think they'll still be around for then.
"Our success will revolve around the retention of those elite athletes because it has been proven in the past that once we get athletes back from an Olympic cycle, we get better results."
It appears many of those who have worn black singlets at Olympic, world championship and World Cup level since the 2004 Athens Games will either tone down their involvement in 2009 or take the year off altogether.
"The more experienced group have had the intensity of working 12 months of the year for a number of years," Cotter said.
"It does take its toll and they have to have time off to refresh."
Making sure three-time world champion Mahe Drysdale is happy will be high on Cotter's priority list.
Drysdale voiced uncertainty in a Sunday newspaper (eds: Sunday Star Times) about his future, indicating he wants to work in a quality programme and to be regarded solely as a single sculler.
Cotter said nothing could be guaranteed as crew allocation decisions were still some distance off.
He nevertheless planned to sit down with Drysdale, whose popularity exploded at Beijing following his heroic battle with a virus to secure bronze.
"We have to have a discussion about how he feels. He's a champion athlete and we want to work with him."
Sydney Olympic champion Rob Waddell seems unlikely to feature this year despite indicating a desire to continue with rowing.
He is likely to race for his employers Team New Zealand in the Pacific Series yachting regatta off Auckland in February, ruling him out of that month's national rowing championships on Lake Ruataniwha - a criteria for selection to World Cups and the Poznan world championships.
The multiple-medalled pair of George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle won't be sighted. Bridgewater has begun studying in Oxford while Twaddle is currently injured.
Of the men's four, Carl Meyer is in training for the Coast to Coast multisport race while James Dallinger and Eric Murray have opted against national summer training work for now.
Coles' pairs partner, Juliette Haigh, will work and row in London for the next 12 months, leaving only single sculler Twigg back from the women's group at Beijing.
Cotter said members of the promising women's eight would be filtered down into new combinations.
"It will be a learning curve for them in the small boats," he said.
"We'll select from trials and see how we go from there.
"But we've still got to have a standard for crews who will perform in A finals. We can't select people just to fill those seats."
Cotter said it was "unlikely" a men's eight will be formed this year.
Dick Tonks is Rowing New Zealand's head coach while John Robinson, Wayne Maher and Calvin Ferguson are working with him over summer.
Cotter said a host of promising coaches were developing at New Zealand's regional performance centres and rowing depth was strong at regional and junior international level.
That depth was sparked by New Zealand's on-water success of the past five years, marked by bumper medal hauls at world championships in Gifu, Eton and Munich along with the Beijing Olympics.
This week's appointment of Cotter - the 52-year-old who has spent 3-1/2 years on the Rowing New Zealand board as high performance manager - in place of the successful Andrew Matheson nearly completes the RNZ appointment process.
All that remains is the naming of a permanent chief executive, an important appointment with the 2010 world championships to be hosted on Lake Karapiro.
- NZPA
