Rebecca Scrown and Juliette Haigh were the first to be crowned New Zealands Rowing World Champions of 2011 in a nail biting victory against their British rivals just less than a year until the London Olympic Games. The New Zealand mens pair of Hamish Bond and Eric Murray also added to the success with a win over the British. After a strong start and dominant lead Bond and Murray still had to fight at the finish line when the British crew came back with a last minute attack. Mahe Drysdale was back to his top form as he took his fifth world championship title in the mens single sculls when he managed to hold off defending champion Ondrej Synek by half a boat length at the finish line. In the womens single sculls Emma Twigg finished with a bronze. Twigg held the lead for most of the race but was caught in the last 400m by Mirka Knapkova and Ekaterina Karsten. Also in the sculling the womens double of Anna Reymer and Fi Patterson produced a bronze medal for New Zealand. The girls showed the most promising performance for New Zealand in the womens double sculls since the Ever-Swindells. In the light weight events double Storm Uru and Peter Taylor finished with a silver medal to add to the collections. Mens double Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan proved why they were favourites in the final as they took home another gold for New Zealand and retained their world title with a another dramatic win with a sprint to the end fighting against German competitors. In other categories, the New Zealand Mens eight missed out on London Qualification coming fourth in a B final they needed to win. However, there was a Bronze medal for the young womens quad crew who finished off a very positive season in their first World Championship Final as a team. The quad were pleased to cross the line in third after battling back from fifth place in the early stages of a race in which Germany and the United States took the top two spots. New Zealand ended the World Rowing Championships 2011 with a total of eight medals in Olympic events and 11 boats qualified for the 2012 London Olympics. These are the men's single scull, women's single scull, men's pair, women's pair, men's double, women's double, men's quad, women's quad, men's lightweight double scull, women's lightweight double scull and the men's four.
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