Rowing: Haigh looks forward to finishing some business

Juliette Haigh (left) and Rebecca Scown aim for the world championships at Lake Karapiro in November. Photo / Christine Cornege

A sense of unfinished business helped push Juliette Haigh back into a boat, and a third Olympic Games campaign was the ideal lure.

Haigh and coxless pair partner Nicky Coles contested the last two Olympic finals, finishing sixth and fifth. Coles retired after the Beijing Games two years ago and Haigh took a year off in London.

She indulged in a spot of normal living, away from the single-minded lifestyle required of top-level athletes. She had a day job, but kept up her rowing, training at the London, and University of London clubs on the Thames and competed at the high profile Henley regatta.

"It was a good year and I did all the things I wanted to do, got out and saw the world a bit," she said before departing yesterday with the bulk of New Zealand's elite squad for their World Cup campaign in Europe.

"It was a time for me to do something different, to be challenged and be out of my comfort zone."

In the back of her mind, however, she knew she would eventually want to get back on the water in New Zealand.

"After Beijing my first thought was 'I've had enough'. That's why I wanted to go overseas, to know if I wanted to come back. I had a low period after Beijing but I still felt long term I wanted to have another go."

When she returned last September, Haigh had a tilt at sculling, which was the only rowing she did while in England, but didn't have enough time to fully get to grips with the requirements of the double oar discipline.

In any case, she believes sweep oar rowing is where her talents lie. Last summer the national selectors assessed different combinations before settling on Haigh and Rebecca Scown as their first choice.

Scown had teamed up with Emma-Jane Feathery last year, with top-notch results, including World Cup victories at Munich and Lucerne and a bronze at the world champs in Poland.

But Haigh, 27, re-proved herself in that training programme, nudged Feathery into the quad boat, and is enjoying being back in the top flight, and in a boat in which she is familiar. She and Coles won the world title in Japan in 2005 and were always there or thereabouts from then on until Beijing.

Haigh is relishing being back in the competitive New Zealand environment and is eager to see what she and Scown, cousin of former Olympic single sculler Sonia Waddell, can produce.

The world championships at Lake Karapiro in the first week of November are an obvious target.

But Haigh also has London and the 2012 Olympics in her mind, which is where the "unfinished business" comes in.

Still, Europe comes first. All New Zealand crews face the prospect of fresh trials after returning home.

The message is clear: perform strongly in the coming weeks and your chances of rowing at Lake Karapiro will be correspondingly stronger than for those crews who struggle in the World Cups at Munich next weekend and Lucerne on July 9-11.

"We've both won World Cups and that's really nice," Haigh said of her new partnership.

There has been some injury upheaval among the women's squad.

Quad sculler Harriet Austin has a fractured rib and has been replaced by Fiona Paterson for the rest of the European campaign, which for a handful of crews began at the opening World Cup regatta in Bled, Slovenia, last weekend.

Paterson was in the double scull but her partner, Anna Reymer, has pulled out of the trip with injury. Four-time world single sculling champion Mahe Drysdale flew out on Thursday, now over a back niggle.