Matt Macdonald and Ollie Maclean have slotted straight back into international rowing after time away from the sport, both progressing to the semifinals of the Men's Four at the World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam.
The pair won silver in the Men's Four at the Paris Olympics in 2024, then stepped away from competition altogether. Maclean headed to the United States, working for a start-up in San Francisco for nine months before shifting to New York for another nine, squeezing in a Masters degree on the side.
"It's good to be back," Maclean says. "I wasn't sure after Paris if I was going to come back."
He returned to New Zealand in March and rejoined the High Performance squad at Lake Karapiro. There he and Macdonald were paired with newcomers Harry Fitzpatrick and Fred Vavasour to form a fresh four with the Los Angeles Olympics as the long-term target.
Early days, by Maclean's own admission.
"Yeah, we're a pretty fresh crew, but it's an exciting project," he says. "This was our first international race together, and what's exciting is that we can just build on each race because we have so many areas for improvement."
New Zealand finished third in their heat, behind the USA (6:22.22) and France (6:25.62), just 0.02 seconds off the French after closing hard over the final 800 metres.
"It just took us a while to get into that rhythm we've been finding in practice over the last 10 days," Maclean says. "We know what speeds we can do when we are in that rhythm, you can obviously see the damage we can do when we do hit it."
The Women's Four also booked their spot in the semifinals, battling Australia, Romania and gusting headwinds to get there.
"Especially in that last 1K, which was pretty challenging," says Kate Haines, who rowed alongside Alana Sherman, Isla Blake and Ella Cossill. "We knew it was going to be like that, but it doesn't make it any easier."
"I think people probably handled it better than us, but that's just part of it and we can step up. We know what we need to do, so I feel quite confident in that."
Romania's Ancuta Bodnar, rowing in the bow seat, gave some sense of the field's depth. Since 2018 she has finished top two in all but one of her 58 major races, across four different boat classes.
Australia led throughout to win in 7:09.67, ahead of Romania (7:17.15) and New Zealand (7:22.55).
There was encouragement too for Ben Mason and Finn Hamill in the Men's Double Sculls, who tested themselves against Dutch pair Simon van Dorp and Melvin Twellaar in their quarter-final. New Zealand held second from the halfway mark, trailing by just over three seconds at 1500 metres before the Dutch eased off to win in 6:44.95, with the Kiwis crossing in 6:47.99.
They'll face Great Britain, Belgium and Czechia in tomorrow's semifinal.
The Women's Quad of Stella Clayton-Greene, Olivia Hay, Beckie Leigh and Veronica Wall finished fourth in their heat and will contest the C Final at 12.30am on Friday, New Zealand time.
