Eye on rowing clock

Press, 25 July 1985, Page 48

Eye on rowing clock

PA Auckland The New Zealand rowing team manager, Mr Dudley Storey, will assess the chances for success at the world championships at Hazewinkel in Belgium next month after his six crews undergo time trials on Lake Karapiro on Saturday. While stopwatches will be prominent, Storey is not expecting any world shattering times. “It is not a trial in the

strict sense as the results are not used to grade the crews,” Mr Storey said. “All we are doing is to assess the work rate of the crews in relation to their period of training. In other words, we want to find out how fast the crews are going before they leave New Zealand. “The coaches have brought their crews to a minor peak for the trials. When they know how fast

they are going, they will know how much work must be done before the world championships start on August 26." Mr Storey said that at this stage, the crews should be rowing about 10 seconds slower than the times they will need to get among the medals at Hazewinkel. “We have kept very detailed information on winning times over the past years, so we have a pretty

good idea of how our crews should be going at this stage,” he said. “To win at Hazewinkel the eight will have to row between smin 34s and smin 375. If the crew can do smin 45s on Saturday we will know they are right on target. “At the other end of the scale our lightweight single sculler. Greg Manson, will want to clock about 7min 10s at Hazewinkel so he will have to be doing about 7min 15s on Saturday,” said Storey. The New Zealand team will go into the world championships without any competitive rowing. “We have found it works pretty well this way,” Mr Storey said. “It is just like a well planned Entebbe raid. We will whip in to steal the medals — I hope — and then whip straight out again."