KEY POINTS:
Mahe Drysdale, Duncan Grant, Storm Uru, Joseph Sullivan and Emma Twigg have two things in common.
Apart from being current world champions or World Cup winners this season, all are scullers as distinct from rowing the sweep oar boats.
Drysdale will be chasing his third straight world single
sculls title in Munich next month.
Grant won two cup regattas at Amsterdam and Lucerne in the non-Olympic lightweight single, where he had Uru hard on his tail both times. Uru retained his world under 23 lightweight single title in Scotland last weekend, joining Sullivan and Twigg, who won the individual crowns at the same championships.
When New Zealand rose to prominence on the world stage in the late 1960s and early 1970s success was largely attained in larger boats, eights and coxed or coxless fours.
There seems to be a rise in the quality of the scullers, most notably Olympic champions Caroline and Georgina Evers-Swindell, who have won three world titles as well as gold in Athens in 2004.
New Zealand will have strong chances at Munich - which doubles as the Olympic qualifying regatta for Beijing next year - in the coxless four and both coxless pairs.
But is there something going on here with the rise of the scullers, or is it simply coincidence? And is there a difference between the temperamental or physical makeup required for two distinctly different disciplines?
Rowing New Zealand high performance boss Andrew Matheson hadn't given it much thought, mainly because across the board New Zealand rowing is in good shape.
"I think it's a reflection of the programme overall," he said. "I don't think we're necessarily better at the scull than the sweep oar; it's just that the sculling performances are starting to catch up to the sweep oars, and that's quite exciting."
Matheson believes what rowers do at secondary school has a bearing on where their preference lies.
"Some will have done more sweeping than sculling and vice versa," he said. "For example, Joseph Sullivan came out of Picton, where he and Daniel Karena worked away in a double [scull] because that was all that was there.
"But what we're generally seeing - which is really positive - is a lot of athletes are getting more broad skills technically, so they can row both sides, bow and stroke, and scull as well and be really competent in how they're doing it."
Matheson subscribes to the view that some rowers prefer to be on their own; others respond better in a team environment.
"If you look at Mahe, when he got out on his own I think he felt he had a lot more control over his own performances, and to a certain degree it's the same with Emma."
Twigg went to the 2005 under-23 worlds at 18 and came fourth, having already won the junior title in Brandenburg, Germany. That fired her imagination. She was in the elite eight last year before branching out solo this year.
She took omission from the senior squad for Europe this year particularly hard, but the selectors dangled a carrot: win the under-23 title and you're off to Munich.
"Last year I really enjoyed the camaraderie in the eight," she said from Scotland.
"I'm very much a group person, but when I had a bit of success a couple of years ago I really enjoyed it.
"There was no single scull woman in New Zealand so that was a spot up for grabs and I went for it."
She sees the single seat as her boat of choice for the next few years "but at the end of the day it's down to the selectors and what they think is best. But while I'm doing reasonably okay, it's something I'd like to pursue".
Murray Watkinson competed at the 1972 Olympics in the single, finishing fourth in the B final and had a smattering of good international results. But then came Eric Verdonk, a steely Aucklander of Dutch extraction, who compiled an outstanding record in the 1980s and 90s.
Verdonk won bronze at the Seoul Olympics of 1988 to go with a world champs bronze two years later in Tasmania and a bronze at the Commonwealth champs of 1986.
He also won gold in the double scull with Richard Newey at the Commonwealth champs in Ontario in 1994, and the bronze in the quad scull at the same regatta.
But in a way Verdonk's success in the single came by accident, rather than design. He began as a sweep oar, and moved into sculling primarily to pursue a fierce ambition to get to the Olympics.
"It wasn't that there weren't good scullers round then. It was simply a priority selection issue," he said. "The seats going to the Olympics were by and large in sweep boats. By default I trained with sweep oarsmen.
"My first red coat [national title] was in a coxless pair with Keith Trask and that earned me selection as non-travelling reserve in 1986. That catapulted me into the single scull to keep prepared for possibly rowing in the eight."
So Verdonk, despite not being by natural inclination a soloist, found himself chasing his dream alone. "I was a person who put his hand up for whatever event the selectors picked me. It just so happened than in 1987 I was the Australasian sculling champion. That sealed the Olympic seat."
And he never looked back, despite a personal belief that he was a better double sculler and admitted no great personal love for the solo slot. Verdonk acknowledged having an individual mentality was an aspect of the discipline, yet he maintains good scullers can be highly effective sweep oarsmen.
Any suggestion that different physiques are important for success in the different events was "codswallop".
"Most single scullers will blend into other boats extraordinarily well."
He had no immediate feeling of "this is for me" when he went solo. "I wanted to go to the Olympics and win a medal, and I didn't care what boat it was in. I'd either go with somebody or by myself."
The final word goes to Matheson: "Because we're getting the numbers coming through in good quality, that allows you to fill bigger boats, but also look for opportunities for the smaller boats as well."
