Double the trouble: doubling-up in Olympic races

Winning one Olympic medal in rowing is truly an outstanding accomplishment, but winning two, at the same event, is almost unearthly. There are only a handful of rowers to have reached this level. Kim Brennan (née Crow) from Australia won medals in both the single and double sculls at the London 2012 Olympic Games, and Elisabeta Lipa from Romania won medals in both the women’s double and quadruple sculls in 1988, to name a few.

At the Tokyo Olympic Games there are four athletes with the elusive possibility: Kerri Gowler and Grace Prendergast from New Zealand and Annabelle McIntyre and Jessica Morrison from Australia.

World Rowing caught up with Gowler and Prendergast to find out what the experience is like for them.

“We doubled in 2019 with the goal of qualifying both the women’s pair and the women’s eight. The women’s eight is a tough progression system, with only five boats qualifying.

So the goal was to continue do well in the women’s pair, but then the eight just clicked. So when we were assessing for this year, it was just such a good bunch of girls. We could not pass up the opportunity,” says Prendergast.

But the duo not only has to deal with two sets of racing, they have also had to deal with a changing schedule due to adverse weather.

“We are used to racing twice a day, and we’ll just take it as it comes,” says Gowler. “We hope that there’s enough time that it’s possible. I think if we had been in the repechage, we might not have made it for the eight.”

Luckily Prendergast and Gowler sailed through their heat in both boat classes to secure places in the next round of racing, without going through the repechage.

But do they actually train specially for this type of commitment?

“Naturally there are two races in one day throughout much of our training and racing season, in the New Zealand summer for example. So we don’t train for that with a specific intent, but we are well prepared for multiple races in one day,” Prendergast says.

And, of course, they maintain that they do not have a preference for one boat class compared to the other.

“They are different. The eight is an intense and exciting race. There are so many personalities and a coxswain. It’s exciting, intense and faster. The pair, you have more time during the race, it’s more technical, well they are both technical,” Gowler says with a laugh. “But they really complement each other nicely.”

Prendergast and Gowler will race the semifinal of the women’s pair on Wednesday 28 July, followed by the Final (A or B) on Thursday 29 July. They will race the A-final of the women’s eight on Friday 30 July.

McIntyre and Morrison will race the A-final of the women’s four on Wednesday 28 July, and less than three hours later, the semifinal of the women’s pair.