New boat had role in wins

A $25,000 investment into a boat by Whangarei Rowing Club has returned dividends for them after two crews claimed national titles.

The boat provided the men's novice quad and the novice doubles with the tools needed to become Northland's latest national champions.

Club coach Nigel Baddeley said the highlight of last week's event in Twizel was seeing the quad crew of Josh Ackers, Adam McKernan, Kate Wilson (cox), Sam Beazley and Alistair Clark come out on top after losing their heat by a whisker, leaving them to fight it out in the repecharge.

"The [quad] boys were very nervous," said Baddeley. "There were a few crews who were expected to beat us, but we pulled our act together.

"It's not a massive event (about 750 athletes), but the actual calibre of the event gets a lot of people nervous."

Baddeley said some of his eight-strong team members were throwing up before racing because of the nerves.

"They just fluffed [in the quad heat]. But, on reflection it was a good thing because what happened was it made them stop and think.

"And, of course, in the repecharge they came through, and in the final they just rode away which is what we had trained for."

In the men's novice double, of Beazley and McKernan, they went into the event as favourites after winning numerous races in the build-up.

Baddeley said even the local paper had them down as favourites.

"In the double, we joked about winning by 10 boat lengths and that's what it was," said Baddeley. "So that was pretty spectacular stuff.

"The Timaru Herald had us as the ones to beat before the event started, while that can be flattering it can also charge the local crews up quite a bit so we didn't take much notice."

He said the two golds were reward for his crew's hard training, which included a lot of lactic threshold to combat potential scenarios where there would be a short turnaround between races.

"You don't want to sound big-headed about this but those boys trained wickedly hard and, at the end of the day, what they got is what we went for. Yes, someone could have beaten us but it wasn't unexpected and the way we did it was conclusive.

"We had to train around a time schedule of 50 minutes between each two kilometre race, which is pretty hard going. They were super, super fit.

"The scenario did arise in heats, but in the finals they were separate days."

Whangarei's Edward Baddeley also came away with a bronze medal in the single. However, his medal is not directly credited to the Whangarei club because he rows for a region performance centre in Auckland, which is the first step in turning rowers into Olympic athletes.

Also competing at the nationals was Stuart Widger, Crystal Monaghan, Chad Eichler, Max Causley.

Last week's results come off the back of a successful North Island Championships where Whangarei rowers returned with four gold medals and two bronze, making them the most decorated bunch our region has seen.