Rowing: Drysdale reaches worlds semis

Mahe Drysdale. Photo / Greg Bowker

Mahe Drysdale is through to the semifinals in his quest for a fifth world single sculling title.

The 32-year-old Drysdale won his quarter-final at Bled, Slovenia last night to move into the penultimate stage of the event.

Drysdale led all the way to win in 6min 56.08s from Lithuania's Mindaugas Griskonis, who crossed 2.27s back.

American hope Ken Jurkowski was third in 7:02.81s. The first three finishers advanced to the semifinals.

By the 1000m mark, Drysdale was almost 4s ahead of Griskonis and had the measure of his rivals. Drysdale's semifinal is tomorrow night, NZT.

There was a scare for defending world champion Ondrej Synek, who scraped into the semifinals in finishing third in the first heat.

The Czech Republic man just beat home Belgium's Tim Maeyens by .80s to stay alive in a quarter-final won in the fastest time of the four races by Cuba's Angel Fournier Rodriguez in 6:52.31. The other two quarter-finals went to Britain's Alan Campbell, third in last year's worlds at Lake Karapiro, who won in 6:56.18, and Swede Lassi Karonen. He clocked 6:56.02 in comfortably beating Germany's Marcel Hacker and Bulgarian Georgi Bozhilov.

The men's coxless four of Jade Uru, Ben Hammond, James Dallinger and Chris Harris advanced to the semifinals of their discipline.

They finished second in their repechage behind the Netherlands, clocking 5min 54.85s, a slender .18s behind the Dutch.