Ben Taylor and Oli Welch won their opening heat at the World Rowing Championships on the Bosbaan, but don’t let the margin of victory fool you. What should have been a demonstration of the world champions’ superiority became a grinding battle against the elements, with lane draw determining who suffered most.
The headwind that swept across the Amsterdam course on opening day was merciless, especially in the outside lanes where Taylor and Welch found themselves. They built a half-length lead by 500 metres and controlled the race from there, finishing in 7:05.37 with Croatia’s Loncaric brothers second and Switzerland third, but the clock told only part of the story. “Bloody tough and very long,” Taylor said afterwards. “Once those gusts hit, it was just about staying together and not trying to go for extra because the speed dropped if you did.”
The wind was so variable that coach Mike Rodger warned against reading anything into the day’s times. “Even on the push bike you could clearly notice how different the wind was in different places,” he said. “You couldn’t look at any event and take any realistic numbers out of it.” Taylor summed up the mental toll: “You kind of got to the halfway mark thinking, God, I wish this was over already.”
Their semifinal on Thursday morning NZT includes Romania, Great Britain, Australia, Greece and Switzerland, a lineup Rodger described as a “cracker.”
In the Women’s Pair, Katie Lush and Juliette Lequeux held third through the first 500 metres of their heat but slipped to fourth, clocking 7:55.88 against the USA’s winning time of 7:46.79. The pair qualified for the semifinals regardless, though France’s rising talents Hezekia Peron and Emma Cornelis, who were just 19 when they took silver at last year’s World Championships in Shanghai, pushed them hard with a second-place 7:49.47.
Ben Mason and Finn Hamill faced the Olympic champion Romanian double in their Men’s Double heat. The Romanians led by just over three seconds at halfway but both crews secured automatic quarter-final spots by the 1500-metre mark, allowing them to coast through.
Eva Hofmans and Sophie Egnot-Johnson finished fifth in the opening Women’s Double heat, which was won by Ireland in 7:46.73. Their time of 8:02.82 sends them to the C Final on Thursday.
