Rowing: Selectors push boat out for worlds

There will be high expectations for women's coxless pair Juliette Haigh (L) and Rebecca Scown. Photo / Christine Cornege.

You can't accuse the national rowing selectors of being half-hearted.

New Zealand are going for broke for the world championships on their own waters in November. They have picked 18 crews, featuring 55 athletes after a week of selection trials - or perhaps more appropriately re-selection trials.

Winning the hosting rights for Lake Karapiro from October 31 afforded the selectors a second bite.

A squad was chosen for the World Cup regattas in Europe. Then the selectors had the chance to make some adjustments based on performances once the athletes returned home.

Features of the squad include both a men's and women's eight.

The women earned their selection with strong form at the world under-23 championships recently, where they won the silver medal.

Head coach Dick Tonks last week insisted no crews would be chosen without the belief they possessed the capability of at least making the final.

That is a tough marker, but then New Zealand sits among rowing's elite and there is a certain level of expectation.

At last year's worlds in Poland, New Zealand matched Germany as the most successful nation.

They each won three golds from the 14 Olympic events, bagged four apiece from the total 22 classes and over the two World Cup regattas plus the worlds won 14 gold medals, three silver and three bronze.

There is an element of looking to the future in some selections, promise being mixed with hard assessment.

If New Zealand rowing wanted to push the boat out on getting its athletes into the hotbed of top international competition, there's no better - and cheaper - place to do it than in their own waters.

The squad is headed by current world champions, coxless pair Eric Murray and Hamish Bond, lightweight double scullers Peter Taylor and Storm Uru, and four-time single sculling champion Mahe Drysdale, with Duncan Grant in the non-Olympic lightweight single scull.

There will be high hopes for women's coxless pair Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown, who have made a strong job of it after being put together for the European campaign.

They, with Murray and Bond, won both World Cups to show they will be favoured for the gold in November.

Part of the job for the selectors, Conrad Robertson, Athol Earl and Tonks, was fitting bodies into boats. They have plumped for a four and an eight for both men and women in the sweep oar events.

There has been a measure of shuffling about from the earlier World Cup selection. Wairau's Rob Manson has ousted Paul Gerritsen from the men's quad; while the well-regarded Simon Watson, sidelined after a hip operation, is in the coxless four, who finished second at the tough Lucerne regatta last month, at the expense of Sean O'Neill, who is in the eight.

That group contains a mix of the B coxless four, who finished fourth at Lucerne with other up-and-comers.

The women's quad is completely changed from that which disappointed on the World Cup circuit. However, the original four all retain places in other crews.

Graham Oberlin-Brown and James Lassche, from the under-23 lightweight four, are in a double; and the progress of Lucy Strack and Julia Edward, silver medallists at their world under-23 championships in Belarus late last month, will be keenly watched.

There is one adaptive rower in the squad, Cambridge's Danny McBride.

The squad will head to Sydney shortly before the championships for a final training programme.