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KEY POINTS:
The New Zealand rowing selectors face some tricky decisions with the first oar just over 20 months away from being dipped in Lake Karapiro for the World Championships.
With the national championships completed, ideas will no doubt be powering through their minds much like Mahe Drysdale churned through
the water to win his fifth single sculls title on Lake Ruataniwha near Twizel yesterday.
A pivotal question is how much do you invest in new talent this year?
With so many absences through retirement, sabbatical or injury the selectors have the chance in the first year of the Olympic cycle to blood athletes.
That's tempered by the need to meet strict criteria that proves they'll be competitive on the international stage. One way this is done is using what are known as "prognostics", which rate a performance as a percentage of world-best time.
Crews can also be compared against each other within the elite training programme. Once you get into the high 90s you know you have an athlete of medal-winning class.
Fortunately, budgets don't appear to be a problem. Despite the current recession, rowing's funding remains constant through sponsors and the Sparc funding expected to be released tomorrow after a supreme performance relative to every other Kiwi sport at the Beijing Games.
The temptation might be to throw more money at athletes going overseas this year, given costs could be saved with the championships at home in 2010.
But Rowing New Zealand interim CEO Luke van Velthooven says that's not the case. "Even though the championships are in New Zealand next year that won't decrease expenses much. We still have to fund a
European campaign to get our athletes the best competition before they return home to race."
Looking at possible selections, the continuing single scull duel between Drysdale and Rob Waddell will see Drysdale get the nod unless Waddell can dramatically improve when trials start next weekend.
Veteran coxless four representatives Eric Murray and Hamish Bond appear a logical choice to replace Nathan Twaddle and George Bridgewater in the men's pair.
Twaddle's detached tendon in his arm is back in working order. He has embarked on rehabilitation with a view to getting back in a boat at full fitness by November. Bridgewater is training with Oxford for the University Boat race against Cambridge on March 29, but that, according to Twaddle, is only when he's not in the library studying.
A men's double appears a certainty. Matthew Trott and Nathan Cohen took out another national title as well as being proven contenders on the international stage with sixth in Munich in 2007. Rob Waddell could figure here, too, after his fourth with Cohen at Beijing but he's again stressed the single is his focus.
Another option could be a quadruple scull boat with under-23 world champion Joseph Sullivan shaping as an athlete of promise.
Emma Twigg is now the country's best performer in the women's ranks, continuing her rise as a single sculler.
There's more of a bottleneck with potential women's pair and multiple sculling combinations with Juliette Haigh on an OE and Georgina Earl, Caroline Evers-Swindell and Nicky Coles retired.
Before the weekend it seemed unlikely any form of elite men's four or eight would be considered.
However a stellar performance in the men's eight final, with the winning crew Southern recording five minutes 33.13 and Central and Waikato just three seconds back, may have the selectors reconsidering. Those three times all had prognostic values in excess of 95 per cent of the world best time, making it a case for further investigation, especially given the cool water of Lake Ruataniwha where athletes also race against the current.
WHERE THEY ARE NOW
What are last year's Olympic rowers doing now?
Returning: Hamish Bond, Nathan Cohen, Mahe Drysdale, Eric Murray, Emma Twigg, Storm Uru, Peter Taylor, Rob Waddell.
Retired: Georgina Earl, Caroline Evers-Swindell, Nicky Coles.
Injured/Sabbatical: George Bridgewater, James Dallinger, Juliette Haigh, Carl Meyer, Nathan Twaddle.
