Rowing: High times for the sport

The gold medallists at Auckland Airport yesterday. Rear, from left: Mahe Drysdale, George Bridgewater and Nicky Coles. Front, from left: Juliette Haigh, Georgina Evers-Swindell, Nathan Twaddle and Caroline Evers-Swindell. Picture / Kenny Rodger

Hosting a world championship and boosting the elite squad are high on Rowing New Zealand's agenda as it presses on towards Olympic glory in Beijing.

Flush with cash from Government funding agency Sparc, these are high times for rowing. But having made a big splash there will be no sitting back basking in a golden glow.

Fresh from their unprecedented four gold medals at the world championships in Gifu, Japan, New Zealand's best arrived home yesterday to a rapturous reception.

Sparc handed over a $250,000 bonus for achieving its target of two gold medals at Gifu. Its total funding for the sport has jumped from $1.252 million in the last year to $2.546 million for the next 12 months.

The world championships have been held in New Zealand once, at Lake Karapiro, near Cambridge, in 1978. They are allocated to Australasia about once every decade. They were held in Barrington, Tasmania, in 1990, and Sydney hosted the Olympic regatta in 2000.

Rowing New Zealand chief executive Craig Ross has had preliminary talks with Sparc about a bid for 2010, which must be lodged with governing body Fisa by the end of February.

Ross said the estimate to host the championships was about $15 million - between $5 million to $6 million to run the operation, with the balance to be invested at Karapiro to turn it into a world-class complex.

"Sparc have been very supportive, very encouraging," Ross said, pointing out that economic benefits would be significant.

New Zealand have two factors in their favour: they are flavour of the moment after their achievements in Gifu; and Australia have been hosts on the last two occasions Downunder.

Provided the bid is solid and the money available, the signs are good.

"We've got Lake Karapiro, which is known as one of the world's best courses," Ross said.

"We left Gifu with a huge level of interest from the big rowing nations. But we wouldn't put a spade in the ground until we knew we had commercial support."

RNZ has set targets for next year's world championships in Eton - three medals, including one gold - with the split changed to two gold and one other for both the 2007 champs in Munich and the Olympics the following year.

Gifu's results suggest New Zealand's rowers are ahead of the game, and RNZ intends staying there. Four regional performance centres are being set up, with head coach Richard Tonks overseeing programmes designed to increase numbers and improve the quality of rowers coming through.

They are in Auckland, Waikato, Central - with branches in Wanganui and Marlborough - and Christchurch. Coaches have been appointed, including former Olympians David Rodger in Waikato and David Lindstrom in Christchurch.

"The idea is to provide a high-performance environment for more athletes," Ross said.

"That will give us a greater pool to work from. And that means we can start building towards big boats."

And that means the eight, still for many the premier rowing discipline. It may be some way off in New Zealand, and Ross insisted it won't happen until the country has more athletes who can produce times to show they can cut it at world or Olympic level, but planning is afoot to enlarge New Zealand's elite squad over the next two years.

Those on the priority list include a women's quad - the under-23 crew won bronze at this year's world championships in Amsterdam - a women's single scull and men's lightweight sculler, which RNZ believes are disciplines where it could make a dent on the big stage.

All the world championship rowers, apart from coxless pair oarsman George Bridgewater, will compete in various events at the Gallagher Great Race on the Waikato River on Saturday.