Ben Taylor and Oli Welch remain the world’s No1 men’s pair after convincingly beating rivals Romania at the Guadalquivir River course in Seville.
The result confirmed what the data and the feeling in the boat before arriving in Europe had been telling them, though they had not quite been able to uncork it in the past couple of weeks.
‘‘The rhythm hasn’t really been there,’’ Taylor said.
‘‘We’ve been struggling to find our way a little bit ... we hadn’t found that feeling we had back home in New Zealand.’’
The pair sat down on the eve of the final and tried to approach things a bit differently.
‘‘We just kind of said, let’s stop trying to search for that feeling and just back ourselves’,’’ Taylor said.
‘‘I think just trying to simplify our rowing a bit and simplify the mindset brought us together.’’
New Zealand led the Romanians by 1.63sec at the 1000m mark and extended that lead to nearly 3sec after 1500m.
The Romanians made one last push with 200m to go, lifting to 45 strokes per minute.
They made temporary inroads but there was no panic in the New Zealand boat and they crossed in 6min 26.86sec. Romania claimed silver in 6min 29.46sec.
The final day turned into a special one for Kate Haines and Ella Cossill from the bronze-winning women’s four.
Both have years of experience rowing at this level but one thing had eluded them.
‘‘I’ve been waiting almost seven years to get a medal,’’ Haines said.
‘‘The first thing Ella and I said to each other after the race was, oh my ‘God, we finally got a medal’.
‘‘We were really trying to soak it up together and remember how far we’ve come.
‘‘You work so hard for these moments, so you need to make the most of them.’’
The rowers joined Waikato clubmates Alana Sherman and Isla Blake to finish third in 6min 43.24sec.
The Netherlands won in 6min 34.92sec, barely half a second up on Australia.
Sherman and Blake were part of the crew that won bronze at last year’s world championships, while Haines and Cossill claimed their seats in the boat at trials in March.
Haines took a break from the sport after the Paris Olympics.
‘‘I did about two months of training, and then just thought I actually need a break. I was pretty burnt out, just lost the spark a bit, lost the motivation.’’
She and Katie Lush, who is now in the women’s pair, decided to do a season of club rowing at Molesey, in England.
‘‘I just found the love for the sport again through being somewhere else, not training as hard, doing it for fun.
‘‘It was huge. I found my purpose again.’’’
The New Zealand men’s four of Fred Vavasour, Campbell Crouch, Harry Fitzpatrick and Josh Vodanovich were racing their first A final at this level in Seville.
World champions Great Britain put on a masterclass to win gold in 5min 54.46sec. New Zealand were sixth in 6min 9.19sec.
The women’s quad of Olivia Hay, Stella Clayton-Greene, Beckie Leigh and Veronica Wall were also sixth in their A final.
A sustained second 500m helped launch Otago University rower Juliette Lequeux and Katie Lush to victory in the B final of the women’s pair.
The New Zealanders now head to a training camp in Varese, Italy, before heading to the second world cup event in Bulgaria in a fortnight. — Allied Media
