KEY POINTS:
BEIJING - China delivered an ominous Olympic warning at the world junior rowing championships in Beijing yesterday, winning six gold medals to eclipse a solitary silver for New Zealand.
Before taking to the Olympic course yesterday, China had won only one gold at the junior championships, and that was in 1998. When the ripples settled they had seven more, plus a silver and a bronze from the 10 finals they contested.
New Zealand officials were shaking their heads in disbelief, as China has no heritage in rowing to speak of.
With its long golden history, New Zealand had to wait until the final race - the men's eight - to secure a silver medal, after three fourths and a sixth.
The talking point was just how good the Chinese elite rowers might prove to be in at the 2008 Beijing Olympics, given the dominance of their youngsters.
One of the head-shakers - Rowing New Zealand boss Craig Ross - told NZPA he was happy with the New Zealand effort.
The New Zealand youngsters on show in Beijing had raised their chances of contesting the world championships at Lake Karapiro in 2010, he said.
New Zealand would look to boat a crew in every event, so rowers who performed with distinction in Beijing would be in the mix.
New Zealand sent five crews to Beijing and all five made finals.
"They all delivered, they made a final. That's unbelievable, it's only four years ago that New Zealand crews never made a junior final," Ross said.
"They can all stand up tall and say we did what they asked us to do."
New Zealand Rowing high performance director Andrew Matheson told NZPA the youngsters made mistakes early in the regatta but learned from it.
"Now they know how tough it is out there. If they let crews go away at the start they don't come back.
"In New Zealand they can let them go, then chew them out and spit them out within 500m. Here they just keep here they just keep going and a lot of (crews) learnt that the hard way on the first day."
In the eight, New Zealand were the fastest crew over the second 1000m, but not fast enough to nab Germany.
Third at the 1000 - 3.38 seconds back on Germany - New Zealand was 3.03secs adrift with 500m to row and just 2.48secs away at the finish.
While they failed to defend the title won in Amsterdam last year, the eight's medal meant for the third straight year the silver fern reached the championship podium.
Stroke Tyson Williams told NZPA the crew rowed a near perfect race but the Germans were too strong.
"I take my hat off to them, they did well. We tried everything on them, but we just couldn't catch them," he said.
"Everything went to the plan exactly, we kept our composure, we did everything by the book."
New Zealand qualified all five crews for the finals, notching fourths in the women's coxless four, the men's coxed four and the men's single sculls - Henry Poor - and a sixth in the women's quadruple sculls.
(Kevin Norquay travelled to Beijing with the assistance of the Asia: NZ Foundation)
- NZPA
