New Zealand bagged three gold medals on a rousing finals day at the third and final World Cup regatta in Poland last night.
Single sculler Mahe Drysdale reinforced his favouritism for the Olympic Games gold by winning his A final. The three-time world champion clocked 6min 58.09s topip strong Czech Republic sculler Ondrej Synek by 1.22s with Olympic champion Olaf Tufte of Norway third over 7s back.
Double scullers Rob Waddell and Nathan Cohen, and coxless pair George Bridgewater and Nathan Twaddle also won gold with impressive displays, which both featured the New Zealand combinations surging clear of their rivals - Waddell and Cohen shortly before halfway, Bridgewater and Twaddle in the last 500m.
Waddell and Cohen were backing up from their World Cup win at Lucerne at the start of the month. They beat the world champions Luka Spik and Uztok Cop by 3.10s.
Women's coxless pair Nicky Coles and Juliette Haigh grabbed an encouraging silver behind the Germans, recording 7:31.09, and single sculler Emma Twigg won bronze, 11s behind the formidable Belarussian Ekaterina Karsten-Khodotovitch.
However, the defending world champion coxless four finished fifth, almost 5s behind the Netherlands quartet. Carl Meyer, Eric Murray, James Dallinger and Hamish Bond had to qualify through the repechage and are off the pace compared with their outstanding 2007 campaign.
In a big surprise, Athens gold medallists Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell didn't even make their A final. They won the B final, poor consolation after finishing last in both their heat and repechage.
Georgina Evers-Swindell picked up the flu which forced them out of the Lucerne regatta, but they'd hoped to be firing in Poznan.
