Ben Taylor and Oli Welch are staying on course to retain their world title after setting the fastest time in the Men’s Pair semis at the World Championships in Amsterdam on day three.
The defending champions controlled their race from the start, putting away Romania and a resurgent Australia with a time of 6min 39.99sec. Australia, the fast-improving crew chasing them down, finished second in 6:41.84, while Romania took third. Welch credits their ability to explode out of the blocks early. “I think we’re naturally quite quick out of the start,” he says. “We’re quite explosive in the gym so it lends itself to that quick start. From there, we just try to control the race from the front.” By halfway, they’d stretched their lead over Australia to more than two seconds. By 1500m, it was three.
The final will demand everything from both crews. Welch isn’t giving away their race strategy. “I can’t say too much,” he laughs. “Don’t want to give it away. The final will definitely be exciting, they’ll be going for it even more, and so will we.”
Ben Mason and Finn Hamill’s Men’s Double Sculls semifinal told a different story. The pair found themselves fifth with 500 metres remaining, nearly three seconds down on Britain. The final sprint brought them no further through the field, finishing behind Great Britain, Belgium, Czechia and Portugal. They’ll race the B Final tomorrow.
Kathryn Glen returned to international competition with a fifth-place finish in her Women’s Single Sculls heat. Only weeks ago, a stress reaction in her rib forced her to miss the World Cup events. “It was such a shock,” she reflects. “It took me a few days to believe it because I’ve always been so sweet with that kind of injury.” The opportunity to row a single at world level feels extraordinary to her. “I feel like it’s a bit of a once in a lifetime opportunity to say that you’re the women’s single sculler, so just trying to embrace that while I’m here.”
Her path forward is clear. She needs to be braver through the middle kilometre when the quarter-finals arrive. “The first day was always about going out and seeing what happens because I haven’t raced any of these girls before,” she says. “I was probably too focused on rowing well into the wind than just being savage with it.”
Katie Lush and Juliette Lequeux raced a formidable Women’s Pair semifinal dominated by Romania’s Simona Radis, widely considered the greatest female rower alive. Romania won in 7:20.94, the Chilean Abraham sisters took second, and Italy third. Lush and Lequeux finished fourth in 7:40.56 and will contest the B Final just before midnight tomorrow night NZT.
Eva Hofmans and Sophie Egnot-Johnson lined up in a Women’s Double Sculls C Final against crews of genuine calibre, including the Greek pairing that won silver at Europeans earlier this month. The New Zealand duo, in their first year together, finished sixth. Egnot-Johnson will shift to the Mixed Double with Mason for the next round.
