Amsterdam threw New Zealand's biggest boats a curveball on the penultimate day of the World Rowing Championships, forcing organisers to scrap the usual heats format in favour of straight time trials.
Officials judged the course conditions unfair enough that crews were sent out solo, one minute apart, rather than racing side by side. Three New Zealand boats had to adjust on the fly.
The Women's Eight of Olivia Hay, Isla Blake, Alana Sherman, Veronica Wall, Stella Clayton-Greene, Beckie Leigh, Ella Cossill, Kate Haines and cox Harry Molloy were grouped with Romania, China, the Netherlands and USA. A second bracket held Great Britain, Australia, Germany, Canada and Italy. The top two from each bracket went straight into the A Final, with the remaining places filled by the next fastest crews overall.
Molloy says the crew found out just 20 minutes before hitting the water. It wasn't new to him, though, having raced under the same system in the UK.
"It would have been pretty daunting if I had never done it before and then had to do it in the biggest moment of my career," he says. "The only thing that really changes is you want to blow up a little bit earlier, you don't want your peak speed to be across the line, you want it 50 metres before that."
New Zealand went last in their bracket, with no idea what the others had produced. USA had already stopped the clock at 6:01.63, Romania 6:03.41, the Netherlands 6:07.11 and China 6:22.05.
"We came across and I thought it went all right, and then I looked at the [big] screen and nothing was up and then as we drifted past it, I could barely see it," Molloy says.
The wait didn't end when they got off the water.
"Then we got told like six minutes later, and everyone's just jumping up and down. Pretty stoked, as you'd imagine."
Their 6:11.11 was enough. The crew races the A Final just after midnight tonight NZT.
Stroke Liv Hay, a former University of Washington athlete racing her first senior world championship, drew on years in American college rowing to steady the crew. "There's quite a few of us who've raced eights for four years in America, so I think we all have that experience but just haven't touched on it recently. We had to pull it out of our back pocket, but it was there," she says. "I think we were all pretty happy with how it went and knew we'd raced our hearts out."
The Men's Eight also came through the time trial system, Ben Taylor, Oli Welch, Matt Macdonald, Ollie Maclean, Josh Vodanovich, Harry Fitzpatrick, Fred Vavasour, Campbell Crouch and cox Oliver Duncan clocking 5:34.30 to advance to tonight's semifinal.
"A lot of the stuff we do in the eight, a lot of the pieces are pretty much a time trial anyway, so we're pretty used to just doing our own thing," Duncan says. "We knew we'd done enough before we even got off the water, [it] made the warm down a bit nicer."
Ben Mason and Sophie Egnot-Johnson produced the fourth-fastest time in their bracket, 6:50.52, and will race tonight's C Final of the Mixed Double.
Earlier in the day, Matt Macdonald, Harry Fitzpatrick, Ollie Maclean and Fred Vavasour lined up for the A Final of the Men's Four, drawing lane six in the very conditions that later forced the switch to time trials. The Netherlands held lane one and led early in front of a home crowd hoping to see a first world title in the coxless four, but the USA surged with 350m remaining to win in 5:41.57. The Netherlands were second in 5:41.84, Great Britain third in 5:44.16. New Zealand, a crew together just six weeks, finished sixth in 5:59.88.
The Women's Four, Alana Sherman, Isla Blake, Kate Haines and Ella Cossill, went head to head with Ireland in the B Final. New Zealand led at halfway but couldn't hold on, Ireland winning in 6:26.34 to New Zealand's 6:29.00, leaving the Kiwi crew eighth overall.
The USA won the A Final in 6:09.87, breaking the previous World Best Time of 6:14.36, set by New Zealand's Kerri Williams, Grace Prendergast, Kelsey Bevan and Kayla Pratt on the same course back in 2014.
Kathryn Glen finished sixth in the C Final of the Women's Single Sculls. She'd originally been picked for the Women's Quad but had to withdraw just before the team left for May's World Cup series. A winter spent on the gym bike got her back on the plane for these championships, and she's now eyeing a return to the quad next season.
