Women’s Pair (W2-) – Final

New Zealand’s Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler were by far the fastest crew coming through from the heats two days ago. This is their first international race of the season and today they faces for the first time the winner of the other heat, the United States One crew of Megan Kalmoe and Tracy Eisser. Kalmoe did not race in the heat due to illness, but she is now back in the boat. Prendergast and Gowler got away the quickest with the second New Zealand boat in the lane next door to them. In that second New Zealand boat was Gowler’s sister Jackie. Then in the Chile boat was Melita and Antonia Abraham. This duo are part of a rowing family as they are quadruplets with two brothers who also row.

Gowler and Prendergast remained in the lead rating 34 strokes per minute. They are the 2014 under-23 champions and they also raced at the Rio Olympic in their country’s women’s eight. Through the middle of the race New Zealand had a handy lead over Kalmoe and Eisser as these two crews moved clean away from the rest of the field. Kalmoe and Eisser come to the pair from racing in the quad at the Rio Olympics. Australia then did a burst and moved into the bronze medal spot. Sarah Hawe and Molly Goodman raced earlier today winning gold in the women’s four.

At the line Gowler and Prendergast had taken gold, the United States held on to silver and Hawe and Goodman took their second medal of the day with a bronze. Gowler and Prendergast had scored a World Best Time of 6:49. They also scored a World Cup Best Time nocking a huge three seconds off the 2016 time set by the Olympic Champions, Heather Stanning and Helen Glover of Great Britain.

Results: NZL1, USA1, AUS, CHI, NZL2, GBR

Kerri Gowler (s), New Zealand, gold
“Super, super pleased with the new World Best Time.”

Tracy Eisser (s), United States, silver
“We are really excited to race together. It’s my first international competition in the pair and I am looking to start building this crew. We are seeing where we are now and where we can go.”

Molly Goodman (s), Australia, bronze
“We are very tired because we raced also in the four. The four is our main boat, we haven’t tried the pair so much, so we are very happy about this medal. We will be next in Lucerne and hopefully the world championships in the four.”

B-final

Kathrin Roach and Sophia Vitas of the USA second boat had the upper hand over Ireland through the heats and repechage. The Irish put up a solid challenge at the start but then slipped back letting the United States get clean away.

Results: USA2, IRL