Rowing: Olympian Twaddle is back in top squad and raring to go rowing

Nathan Twaddle is back in the water after taking a year off from rowing and is eyeing a fresh challenge.

He formed a world championship-winning coxless pair with George Bridgewater and they won bronze at the Olympics in Beijing last year.

Now Twaddle has rejoined the elite national squad for the start of summer training at Lake Karapiro yesterday.

He has not been been idle during his time off. He had long overdue surgery on a troublesome wrist and finished postgraduate study for a diploma of finance at Waikato University.

He was in the Waikato boat on Sunday which won the Gallagher Great Race against Oxford University on the Waikato River.

The winning margin was about two lengths and Twaddle was in good company, with a clutch of current and former senior and under-23 world champions and Olympians, including Duncan Grant, Joseph Sullivan, Nathan Cohen, Dane Boswell and Tobias Wehr-Candler. Twaddle, a durable 33 years old, reckoned surgery or not, he was probably due a break, after eight years full-time in the water.

"I do feel refreshed," he said. "When I started getting back in the boat it was pretty awful and it's been a slow process day by day. But I've got myself to the stage where I'm 70 to 80 per cent of the way there."

When he and Bridgewater parted company - and Bridgewater was in the Oxford eight on Sunday - their seats were taken by Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, who stormed their way around Europe, winning both World Cup regattas which New Zealand attended, and the world title in Poznan, Poland.

Twaddle fancies a crack at sculling. He did it at school and won a couple of national titles so it's not as if he'll be stepping into the unknown.

There is talk of a quad being put together, and Twaddle said there is "a group of really talented scullers coming through".

First, however, he wants to bed himself down again into the elite training routines, which were once second nature. "It was a bit bizarre. For the last five years George and I would turn up and be among the dominant guys in the team," he said.

But Twaddle is not the only old(ish) face returning after a break.

Former world champion Juliette Haigh, who rowed in the coxless pair at Beijing with now-retired Nicky Coles, is back in the squad after taking a year off in England.

University of Sydney beat the Waikato University women in the other race on Sunday.