KEY POINTS:
New Zealand's women's coxless four and quadruple scull and the men's coxed four will join the men's eight in this weekend's finals at the world junior rowing championships in Beijing's Shuyni Olympic course.
Auckland sculler Henry Poor will also progress to the semifinals, having maintained his solid form and finished second in his quarter-final.
In the repechages the women's coxless four booked their place in the A final with a solid row to second place, putting one of the fancied crews, the United States, into the B final. The Italians won the race by 2s, a margin they established by taking a second at each of the first two 500m splits.
Three seconds behind the Kiwi crew on the line were the Americans, with the Koreans a distant fourth.
The NZ four - who spent the past three months training at the Mighty River high-performance centre at Lake Karapiro under one of NZ Rowing's younger coaches, Garry Roberts - have good pace but will need to improve their first 500m speed to be confident of being gold-medal contenders.
Poor showed his class and his patience in his quarter-final. Georgian sculler Miheil Ejoshvili blasted out to take a significant early lead, then spent the whole of the second half trying to hang on to one of the three qualifying places.
Poor, who had the fastest time of his five opponents in the first round, moved into third, then breezed past the failing Georgian in the final 500m, closing to within 2s of Bulgarian Aleksandar Aleksandrov by the close.
The women's quadruple scull faced the Chinese, Romanians, Austria and France in their heat - with only two going through to the A final. At 500m the crew - Kate Reymer (Cambridge club), Laura Fischer (Rotorua club), Alyce Pulford (Hauraki Plains College) and Lucy Spoors (Christchurch Girls High) - were in third place behind the Austrians, who took the race by the scruff of the neck from the start, and France. The order was the same at half way, but the New Zealand crew continued to close and took the second place at 1500m, but then faced a big attack by a flying Chinese crew.
The Kiwis kept their heads and fended them off, making the A final just over a second behind the Austrians.
With the men's eight having already qualified for tomorrow's finals, the Kiwis were interested spectators to see who would join them.
Romania, the US, China and Italy will line up against New Zealand and Germany, after the Great Britain crew caught a crab in the dying moments of the race.
