KEY POINTS:
New Zealand women's pair Juliette Haigh and Nicky Coles will contest their second consecutive Olympic rowing final after fighting back from last place to win a repechage at the Shunyi course today.
The long-time partners had New Zealand supporters on edge as they dropped a boat length behind the rest of the four-crew field after just 250m, but 1000m later they had hit the front and powered clear to beat Great Britain's Louise Reeve and Olivia Whitlam by a boat length. A top-two finish was needed to reach the final.
"Repechages for the Olympic A final are some of the most cut-throat racing you'll ever get," Coles told NZPA.
"We were aware of that and we knew the other crews would be coming out absolutely with a hiss and a roar so there were quite a bit of nerves going on for us."
The prospect of New Zealand qualifying all eight of their crews for Saturday's much-anticipated finals session remains alive.
Already there before today were double sculling sisters Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell and several more black boats are queueing up to join them.
It was the same route as four years ago for Haigh, 26, and Coles, 36, who finished second in a repechage at the Athens Games before placing sixth in the final.
Their dominant showing through the middle stages today suggest they can do better on Saturday.
The 2005 world champions hardly looked flustered after crossing the line in a steady seven minutes 32.64 seconds.
It didn't look so comfortable at the outset, particularly when trailing early leaders Australia through the 500m mark, something that Coles said was an unacceptably large deficit.
"It was further than we would have liked to be," she said.
"We're often behind at that point but we're starting to rely on the fact that others' endurance is not that good, which is not a really good thing to do.
"But we stayed confident that we would go through them."
The acceleration was obvious before they reached the halfway mark and they were soon slicing between their British and Australian rivals at about the 1250m mark.
Through from the other repechage are China and Germany in quicker times, while Belarus and defending champions Romania had already qualified directly for the final.
Five New Zealand crews are in semifinal action tomorrow: single scullers Mahe Drysdale and Emma Twigg, men's pair Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater, men's double scull Rob Waddell and Nathan Cohen and men's four Carl Meyer, Eric Murray, James Dallinger and Hamish Bond.
- NZPA
