KEY POINTS:
BEIJING- Single scullers Mahe Drysdale and Emma Twigg joined the swag of New Zealand rowers booked for Olympic semifinals with successful quarterfinal outings today.
Both needed to place in the first three of their six-person races and that was achieved comfortably, although Drysdale was stretched to win his men's race while Twigg had to settle for third.
It is hard to know how hard both pushed themselves as it will be important to preserve energy for later in the week.
The intensity will increase in the semis on Wednesday, which will also feature the New Zealand men's pair, men's double sculls and men's fours crews.
Drysdale and Twigg have to take the long route because their fields are so big. There are 33 entrants in the men's single and 26 in the women's.
Triple world champion Drysdale looked more fluent than in Saturday's heats but found it hard to shake off Swede Lassi Karonen, who was the fastest heat qualifier.
The New Zealand gold medal favourite just kept Karonen at bay over the final 500m, pipping the Swede by just 0.22 seconds in a time of six minutes 50.18 seconds.
Drysdale was third behind Dutch sculler Sjoerd Hamburger and Karonen at the halfway point before upping his stroke rating.
His time was the second quickest today behind long-time rival Marcel Hacker of Germany.
The other quarterfinals were won by Drysdale's major rivals, Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic and defending champion Olaf Tufte of Norway.
Twigg slotted into third place early in her race and stayed there comfortably throughout, finishing behind Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus and Sweden's Frida Svensson and four boat lengths clear of the fourth-placed South African.
Her time of seven minutes 34.24 seconds was the ninth quickest of the 12 semifinalists but she appeared to cruise, particularly over the second 1000m.
She was nearly 9sec behind double Olympic champion Ekaterina Karsten, who is the clear favourite for gold, having won all three pre-Olympic World Cup races this year and three world titles since 2005.
Temperatures were cooler than Saturday, although the lack of wind and heavy rain this morning created a humid atmosphere at the Shunyi course.
Meanwhile, the women's pair of Juliette Haigh and Nicky Coles will have to wait another 24 hours to race their repecharge after it was put back to tomorrow.
They were to contest the cut-throat four-crew repecharge today but a thunderstorm late in yesterday's session forced a shuffle to the regatta schedule.
Haigh and Coles will need to finish first or second to qualify directly for Saturday's final.
So far the only New Zealand crew in a final are twins Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, as their double sculls field is a small one.
- NZPA
