Kiwi women star at world cup regatta

Emma Twigg. Photo: Getty Images
Emma Twigg. Photo: Getty Images
New Zealand made a successful start to its northern summer with four gold medals at the World Cup regatta in Poznan, Poland, yesterday.

The medals were won by single sculler Emma Twigg, the women's double sculls of Olivia Loe and Brooke Donoghue, women's pair Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler and the lightweight women's doubles sculls of Jackie Kiddle and Zoe McBride.

The men's pair of Michael Brake and Tom Murray also gained a silver.

It was a triumphant return for Twigg, competing in her first regatta since the Rio de Janeiro Olympics in 2016.

She led at the halfway mark in the final and won, a second ahead of Austria's Magdalena Lobnig.

The women's doubles sculls had a very tight race and at the 500m mark was well back in fifth place. But in the second half they picked up the pace and took the lead in the final 500m from a hard-working United States crew.

Loe said it was a tremendous confidence boost to win the race, and had kept calm when trailing. The duo pushed hard in the final stages of the race to finish in the front of the field.

The lightweight crew had the narrowest of wins over an Italian crew. The New Zealanders started off slowly and were fifth early. They slowly marched through the field but with less than 100m to go it looked as if the Italians would win. New Zealand dug deep and managed to bag the victory by just 0.09 of a second.

The women's and men's eights both finished fourth in their A finals, which was not bad for their first hit-out of the season.

Australia won the women's eights and Germany won the men's eight.

Robbie Manson won the B final of the men's single sculls.

 

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