Rower Mahe Drysdale has a week to extinguish what appears an enormous gulf between him and Rob Waddell if he is to fulfil his Olympic dream.
Former Olympic champion Waddell simply rowed away from three-time world champion Drysdale to win the much-hyped men's single sculls final by threelengths at the national championships on Lake Karapiro.
It will take an enormous reversal of form for Drysdale to conquer his more muscular arch rival at the national trials starting on Friday.
He will clearly need to be at his best in a series of one-on-one races designed to find which of these great scullers should represent New Zealand at the Olympic Games in August.
Whoever misses out may well be placed in another crew for the Beijing Games but both fiercely want to compete in their specialist event.
Rowing officials insist Saturday's result will not affect Olympic selection but that will be of no comfort to Drysdale, who has ceded psychological momentum.
"That was pretty abysmal actually," Drysdale said of his race.
"I'm not used to going out there and having a bad race and today, from the first stroke really, it didn't go to plan.
"I'm going to go and have a think about it, probably watch a video and just see what's going on but that was a pretty shocking performance by my standards."
Drysdale had to work hard to hold out fast-finishing Southlander Nathan Cohen in third place but it was the excellence of Waddell that will be playing on his mind. "Rob just got out in front and just absolutely dominated me today."
Waddell was fresh and relaxed after clocking an impressive 6m 53.64s, his new boat untroubled in the choppy conditions.
"It felt like a good start. It's been nice doing a bit of speed work in the last few weeks, you just feel like you're improving all the time," he said.
The pair have now raced each other four times this summer, with Waddell leading 3-1.
But Rowing NZ high performance manager Andrew Matheson said that would count for nothing next week.
"From a selection perspective there was nothing riding on it."
The selectors announce the squad for Beijing on March 7.
