Rowing: Early advantage to Australian student rowers

The New Zealand Universities women's rowing eight races on Lake Hayes yesterday. Photo by Guy Williams.
The New Zealand Universities women's rowing eight races on Lake Hayes yesterday. Photo by Guy Williams.
Australian universities rowing eights went one up on their New Zealand counterparts on Lake Hayes yesterday.

Men's and women's crews went head-to-head over 2000m in the first of three races in Central Otago this week.

In calm conditions, the Australian men won in a time of 6min 10.5sec, 18sec ahead of their rivals, and look early favourites to continue their three-year dominance of the annual transtasman series.

The women's race could hardly have been closer, the Australian crew winning by only 0.2sec, in 6min 55.93sec.

The four crews will do battle again over 2000m on Lake Hayes today, and a third race over 5000m on Lake Dunstan is set down for Saturday.

New Zealand team manager Kirsty Thompson said all universities were represented, with four University of Otago students in both the men's and women's crews. The men's coach, Scott Gullery, is also based in Dunedin.

They had been together since June 26, training for a week on Otago Harbour before arriving in Queenstown on Monday.

Ms Thompson said the crews were part of Rowing New Zealand's development programme. Many former members had gone on to senior national honours, including Rio Olympian Rebecca Scown, 2012 Olympic double sculls champion Nathan Cohen and lightweight men's four representative Alastair Bond.

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