The Otago University men's rowing team begins one of its toughest challenges as its season winds down today.
It starts a three-race series against Russia's Saint Petersburg State University at Lake Ruataniwha this morning, before completing the series in Dunedin tomorrow.
An annual event, the exchange is now in its fifth year.
Otago has won both previous home series, although IT lost last year in Russia.
It has a big task ahead of it to reclaim the title this time, though.
Saint Petersburg State, the No1-ranked rowing university in Russia, looks to have brought a very strong team.
Its athletes regularly go on to compete in the Russian team and the country's under-23 team.
Otago University rowing club general manager Glen Sinclair said the crew looked ''massive'' and described it as being ''well-groomed''.
It had been another successful year for Otago, however, having performed well in China.
Sinclair said the team was a hard-working group.
''Our guys, we don't have any stars, but certainly our crew's done the work, so they'll be in as good a shape as they can be,'' Sinclair said.
''But as I say, we don't have any major stars in our crew, but they're a good solid crew.''
The first race of the series would be a 2km race at Lake Ruataniwha this morning.
After returning to Dunedin, the teams would then race a 5km course from St Leonards to the university's rowing clubrooms in Magnet St at 8am.
It would then hold a 250m sprint from the fertiliser wharf to the clubrooms at 9.30am.
Two trophies would be awarded, one for the winner of the best-of-three series and the other for points, which are more heavily weighted towards the shorter races.
That meant there could still be something to race for in the final race, even if the same crew had won the first two races.
The series began after Sinclair met with the Russian minister of justice, Alexander Konovalov, who had been in involved with the Russian rowing scene and the university's team and Russian-based English Rowing Club.
The travelling team paid flight costs and then the hosts looked after everything else.
