Rowing: Super-fit Twigg keen to branch out before Rio Olympics

Emma Twigg won a raft of championships last year. Photo / Photosport

If there were ongoing concerns about what effect Emma Twigg's studies might have on her rowing career in the shadow of next year's Olympics, she's doing everything she can to ease those.

The 27-year-old single sculls world champion is understood to have set the best 5km ergometer time of any New Zealand woman rower in base training for the upcoming year, despite taking time out of the country's centralised programme to study overseas.

Twigg is home visiting family and friends before she returns to Europe to complete the second module of a one-year post-graduate Fifa masters course in the management, law and humanities of sport, taught across universities in Leicester, Milan and Neuchatel.

She wanted to keep details of the time confidential from her international rivals but said it was four seconds better than her personal best. She set the mark last month.

Twigg was undefeated in 2014 and won her first world title in eight attempts. Rowing's world governing body Fisa acknowledged Twigg's achievements by naming her Female Crew of the Year. She was poised to qualify the boat for the Rio de Janeiro Olympic Games this year until she opted to study.

Twigg argued the flexibility of single sculling meant she could train around academic commitments.

Rowing New Zealand were not convinced, suggesting she defer entry until the year after the Games when they would be prepared to offer a sabbatical similar to Mahe Drysdale's after London. Twigg declined and will receive no government funding this year.

RNZ argued that 2015, Olympic qualifying year, was too important to have someone training away from the team. They were also concerned it would create an awkward precedent, especially with athletes such as double sculling world champions Fiona Bourke and Zoe Stevenson capable of staking their own claim to the boat.

Nine single sculling spots can be qualified at this year's world championships in France.

Twigg has continued to compete internationally since starting her course in September. In October, she won the women's double scull at the British national championships and the Armada Cup in Switzerland.

In Leicester, Twigg found training facilities about 500m from her residence. She expected to organise a similar arrangement in Milan.

"I actually expected it to be harder getting to and from training," Twigg said. "My routine involved training from 6-8am, going to lectures from 9am-5pm, training afterwards and getting to bed before 11pm. It was a bit different to [being based at Lake] Karapiro where you have ample time to recover but I'm determined to make this work. It has reignited my fire to get up in the morning."

Twigg hopes subsequent training data will provide RNZ with a compelling reason to select her to qualify the Olympic boat at August's world championships after her course finishes in July.

"As it stands, I won't be there but it's up to me to keep fit. I don't know what will happen if they [RNZ] change their mind. I could do some of the World Cup regattas myself, but my entry still needs to be endorsed by the national body."

Twigg also intends to compete at the independent Holland-Bekker and Henley regattas in the Netherlands and England respectively.

It's likely someone will be selected to qualify the boat and that person would trial against Twigg the following March in a re-enactment of the 2008 Drysdale-Rob Waddell duel before the Beijing Games.

The worst-case scenario is that no one qualifies the boat, meaning a New Zealander would be forced to qualify at the Regatta of Death - the last qualifying option before the Olympics - in May 2016.