Rowing: NZ selection straightforward after World Cup success

Our rowers have been duly rewarded with a trip to Florida for next month's worlds. Photo / 123RF

The selection meeting to finalise New Zealand's squad for the world championships would have been among the shorter in recent years.

After all, performances put up at the two World Cups in Poland and Switzerland were hugely impressive.

New Zealand crews won six gold and one silver medals at both regattas in Poznan and Lucerne, topping the World Cup medal list by a mile - or more specifically with 58 points, to second-placed Britain's 34 with Italy's 33 the only other nation within cooee of the winners.

So rowers have been duly rewarded with a trip to Florida for next month's worlds. The only two of 14 Olympic classes in which New Zealand won't be represented are the women's quad and men's lightweight double. Promising Matthew Dunham is in the non-Olympic lightweight single, but the search is on for a suitable crewmate.

"We've got to find another sculler to make sure we can get in that boat," Rowing New Zealand high performance boss Alan Cotter said yesterday.

"We're keen to develop athletes and we'll see what the summer squad brings."

The women's quad is a different situation and Cotter suggested getting four women up to speed in time for the 2020 Tokyo Olympics is shaping as a challenging task.

"We haven't got the depth and standard and that's why the boat was not selected. We'd like to say [we'll find it] but we've got to see some athletes stepping up a bit more to get a boat [to the Olympics] at this stage."

The women's four, a new event at Tokyo as the balancing of the genders was implemented - seven apiece, with the men's lightweight four dropping off - has a development feel to it. These worlds will be a first step towards a competitive Olympic four.

Beth Ross and Ellie Jeurissen are part of the four, having missed the fours final at the world under-23 championships in Bulgaria last month by one place. The other half of that quartet, Charlotte Spence and Ella Greenslade, are the reserve pair combination for the worlds.

Others promoted to the elite level are Charlie Rogerson, in the men's four and Phillip Wilson, a reserve for the coxless pair.

RNZ officials are rightly chuffed at the World Cup performances, the standouts being single sculler Robbie Manson, double sculling duos Olivia Loe and Brooke Donoghue, and Chris Harris and John Storey, and pair Kerry Gowler and Grace Prendergast, all of whom won golds at both regattas.

"They did a really great job," Cotter said of the World Cup travelling group. "And that's why we didn't even trial some boats, because of what happened in Europe. That's what we said at the beginning; if people perform in Europe, more than likely they will be the crews selected [for the worlds]."

The New Zealand squad will head for Florida on September 14.