Top oarsmen shine at rowing titles
PA
Hamilton
World championship oarsmen stood out in the preliminary heats of the men’s championship coxless pairs at the national rowing championships at Lake Karapiro yesterday.
The new Waikato pairing of Geoff Horan and Herbie Stevenson, decided on late last week by the Waikato and Olympic eights coach, Harry Mahon, cruised home nearly three lengths clear of Hauraki’s Merv Troughton and Shane Murphy in the first heat.
Avon 1, the Duisburg gold medallists, Les O’Connell and George Keys, finished five seconds ahead of Waikato 2, a Bruce Holden and Ross Dormer combination in the second and then the North Shore 1 combination of Mike Stanley and Roger White-Parsons, also world championship gold medallists, cleaned up the third heat.
West End 1, Aucklanders Tony Lawton and Andrew Bruce, the other pairing to make the semi-final, will
have their work cut out against the other world class crews.
The coxless pairs’ times were not fast with a stiff easterly cross-wind blowing up during their racing and causing steering problems. Surprisingly the top North Shore pair, Keith Trask and Chris Pierce, winners of this event at the Auckland championships just over a week ago, sat out the heats on the bank.
“Their main priority is the four and eight so I didn’t want them out in this,” said the North Shore coach, Brian Hawthorne.
The present men’s championship single sculler, Garry Reid, from Whakatane, looks to be untroubled for his final on Saturday after the first heats yesterday.
He covered the course in an easy 7min 23.0 s in the first heat, the nearest to him being Brett Cooper, from Cambridge, winner of the second heat in 7:25.0.
The organisers of the championships had a mammoth task ahead of them yesterday — and the prospect of another of the same today.
With record entries at these championships, especially in the novice and intermediate levels following a surge of interest in rowing, yesterday saw 122 heats raced over a 12-hour period from 8 a.m.
Today many of those who failed to make their quar-ter-finals or semi-finals in yesterday’s heats, have a second chance with the repechage heats.
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Press, 28 February 1984, Page 30
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358Top oarsmen shine at rowing titles Press, 28 February 1984, Page 30
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