World Cup Success for WAIS Rowers
WAIS rowing athletes and 2012 London Olympians Alex Hagan and Hannah Vermeersch have won gold as members of the Australian women’s eight, at the Sydney Rowing World Cup in Penrith.
With an average age of just 21 years, the emerging Australian crew hung onto an early lead to upset the USA and claim gold in a time of 6:06.98.
The US boat had three gold medallists from last year’s Olympics, and have not lost an international women’s eight race since 2006. Olympic silver medallists Canada took second place, capping a fantastic result for the Australian women, who had been sixth in the eight in London last year.
A delighted Alexandra Hagan highlighted her teams’ effort in executing their race plan and said it was a wonderful feeling to win in front of a home crowd.
“I cannot believe we actually did it,” she said.”We knew that you would be able to throw a blanket over everyone at the 1000m mark, but we made a promise as a crew to stay internal until that point and that is exactly what we did.”
“We then executed our tactics perfectly and stuck together and it all just worked out so well. It was amazing getting out of the boat and walking up the pontoon to a whole grandstand cheering for us. It was a fantastic feeling,” Hagan said.
And 2008 and 2012 Olympic coxswain Elizabeth Patrick (VIC) added: “The young energy and the willingness of the girls to learn are very inspiring and really motivating. There is such amazing potential in this crew and the future for women’s rowing in Australia is very exciting.”
Hagan and Vermeersch were joined as World Cup medallists by fellow WAIS scholarship holders Maia Simmonds (silver in the women’s lightweight double) and Matthew Cochran (bronze in men’s eight) capping a thoroughly successful regatta for the WAIS contingent representing Australia.
Simmonds competed alongside Alice McNamara and the pair made a bright start in the women’s lightweight double final, sitting in first place at the first 500m split.
But the New Zealand combination of Julia Edward and Lucy Strack took over from there to win inside seven minutes, a full second clear of the Australian combination. Great Britain claimed bronze.
Matthew Cochran was a late addition to a youthful Australian men’s eight squad, which defied expectations to row third for bronze.
Great Britain was peerless from start to finish, powering home in a time of 5:29.90min ahead of the USA in second, whilst Australia rounded out the podium in third.
Rowing Australia’s National High Performance Director Chris O’Brien said he was impressed with the efforts of Australia’s young team members as they build towards Rio in 2016.
“The team did a great job today. Of course this was the first international competition and it is only year one of the new Olympiad, but it was great to have our young talent out there in some very gutsy racing and they have really stepped up to the plate.”
“It has been a great motivation for everyone to have an international competition in Australia and to race so many London 2012 Olympians on our home waters. This has been a great start to the Olympic cycle. From here we will go on to pick the teams for the next World Rowing Cups, as well as the Junior, Under 23 and Senior A World Rowing Championships in August,” he said.
Rowing Australia also finished at the top of the overall World Rowing Cup points table for the event, ahead of Great Britain and New Zealand.
– with Rowing Australia