Rowing: Selectors go for broke in squad for worlds

Paula Twining will call on her vast experience when working with a fledgling eight. Photo / Getty Images

Develop or dilute? That's the question the national selectors have pondered for the past week of trials before naming their whopping 18-boat, 55-athlete squad for the World Championships on Lake Karapiro from October 31-November 7.

The reduced cost of racing at home and the chance to blood athletes ahead of the qualification year for the London Olympics has proven too tempting for the panel of Conrad Robertson, Athol Earl and Dick Tonks.

The consequence is an audacious, expansive plan. It places pressure on seven new boats since the last World Cup in Lucerne to meet the expectation of being a capable finalist in each class.

The flip side of the coin is that, if the crews do not perform well, the interest (and the money) from Sparc could be diluted.

Most interesting is the women's eight. New Zealand entered an eight most recently from 2006-2008. It failed to qualify for the Beijing Olympics but contained some of the current top small boat talent.

Six of those who missed out on the Games are still competing in various crews two years later. Three of them - Paula Twining, Emma Feathery and Rebecca Scown - have world championship medals. Single sculling medal hopeful Emma Twigg was in the eights crew of 2006.

Twining, 28, was a world championship silver medallist in the quadruple sculls in 2001. She has since become one of New Zealand's most versatile rowers, sculling or sweeping oars in a black singlet for eight of the last 10 years. This season she has been moved from the women's quad to offer experience to the fledgling eight over the next two months.

Twining laughs at the prospect of being a Miss Fix-it: "We did our first time trial on Friday.

"It is exciting to be put with a largely under-23 crew for what will be one of the highlighted events of the championships.

"The selectors have put their faith in home water advantage and it seems incredible we have a similar number of crews these days to major rowing powers like Britain and Germany. Getting world championship experience for as many athletes as possible is a sound policy."

More than half of the new eight (Kelsey Bevan, Tarsha Williams, Hayley Hoogeveen, Jess Loe and coxswain Frances Turner) are from the crew which last month took a silver medal behind the United States at the under-23 world championships in Belarus.

In fact, Loe will no doubt find herself the subject of a trivia question in years to come as to who was the first "Loe" to be in the engine room of a New Zealand eight since her All Black prop forward father Richard.

Rowing New Zealand high performance manager Alan Cotter says having London 2012 on the horizon was a key to filling 13 of the 14 possible Olympic boat categories. The only category missing is a lightweight men's coxless four. However, a non-Olympic coxless pair is entered, so the selectors are targeting the four in the near future.

"London is part of the reason we have named so many crews," Cotter says. "The more elite competition our athletes get, the better. However, they still need to have a realistic prospect of making finals.

"They have all performed at their respective World Cups and under-23 world championships. Athletes were promised if they did that they'd be in contention.

"The two [elite] men's fours are a classic example this season. The B crew got fourth to the A crew's second at the World Cup in Lucerne. That's been backed by some top performers at under-23 level so we felt comfortable making up a men's eight."