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Five gold, three silver and a bronze in Kiwi rowing medal haul

Five gold, three silver and a bronze represented a fantastic 2011 season debut for New Zealand's rowers, with the men's and women's pairs, the men's heavy and light double and Mahé Drysdale all winning and Emma Twigg putting in a superb performance to take a very close second place.

Mahé Drysdale demolished a field that included Sweden's Lassi Karonen. The pace is clearly there and, with his back holding out in its first real international test since Karapiro 2010, Drysdale's quest for Olympic success looks back on track.

Emma Twigg was also outstanding. Rowing in the event that undoubtedly had the highest quality field of the entire regatta, she took a fighting silver just a few feet behind Olympic and world champion Ekaterina Karsten and well ahead of the world champion Frida Svennson. She will sense that breakthrough World Cup win is close now.

Predictably - Eric Murray and Hamish Bond annihilated their opposition, but did it in style with another very fast six minutes and 20 seconds time. They will now be eager to see what speed the British, and the returning Canadian Olympic silver medal winners from Beijing have to offer when they meet in Lucerne.

The women's pair of Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown took a comfortable five second win and will now be focused on the next races with Hamburg very much part of the work in progress under coach John Robinson. They too are likely to face tougher opposition in Lucerne, but they made the perfect start to 2011.

It was also a perfect start for world champions Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan. Switching the order from Lake Karapiro, they completed the customary fast first-half comfortably in the lead and controlled the race from that moment on. The British, French and Australians will crank up the level of opposition for them in Lucerne by a notch or two.

World champs in 2009 in the light double - Storm Uru and Peter Taylor - are one of the class acts in this hotly-contested Olympic class and they looked it with a great burn through the Chinese number one boat as they raced through the middle part of the race. A few injury worries earlier in the year will now hopefully be behind them and they too will be looking forward to the rest of the season after a great weekend in Hamburg.

Not too long ago Ben Hammond and Chris Harris were in the developing men's eight but a late draft into the four with 2007 world champions James Dallinger and Carl Meyer left little time to fine tune the technique and new rhythm before Hamburg. Their second place, close behind a class German crew, therefore represented an excellent start. Sure, there are more crews to come in Lucerne, and it will probably be harder, but this four will only get better and better and a debut silver was outstanding.

Another crew looking at the upward curve of improvement is the New Zealand women's quadruple scull of Sarah Gray, Louise Trappitt, Fiona Bourke and youngster Eve Macfarlane are closer to the international standard in this class than the boat has been in recent years. That bodes well for what is a young crew with real potential.

On Saturday, three-time world champion Duncan Grant got his season off to a good start with a silver medal behind Denmark's Henrik Stephanson. Keen to make up for the disappointment at his home world championships, Grant has found form again but will only be targeting the top step of the podium.

Results

Gold - Women's Pair
Gold - Men's Pair
Gold - Men's Double Scull
Gold - Men's Lightweight Double Scull
Gold - Men's Single Scull
Silver - Women's Single Scull
Silver - Men's Lightweight Single Scull
Silver - Men's Four
Bronze - Women's Quad

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