Horrie reigns supreme

NSWIS rower Erik Horrie has continued his domination of the men’s arms and shoulders single scull with a blistering win at the 2015 World Rowing Championships in France.

Horrie, coached by Jason Baker, went out in steady fashion and moved to the front of the field by the 500m mark, establishing a three second lead over rival Tom Aggar of Great Britain.

From there it was all Horrie, who extended his lead over the final 500m to clock a time of 4:45.550 and secure his third consecutive world title by nearly six seconds.

“It’s unbelievable to win a third World Rowing Championship title. It’s certainly not something I imagined doing when I first started rowing almost five years ago now," Horrie said to Rowing Australia after the win.

“My race went exactly to plan, I knew everyone was going to come out fast and today was no different than any other day. Everyone had a bit more of a hunger, but I stuck to my race plan that I had worked on with my coach and it paid off at the end of the day.”

There was further medal success for Horrie’s fellow NSWIS athlete Cameron Girdlestone, who won silver as part of the Australian men’s quad scull crew.

Joining David Crawshay, Karsten Forsterling and David Watts, the Australians were third at the halfway mark before a charge towards the finish line, powering past Switzerland to finish just over one second from winners Germany, who led from start to finish.

In other events, NSWIS athletes Laura Dunn, Georgia Miansarow and Sarah Pound finished just short of a medal in the lightweight women’s quad scull, placing fourth; Jack Hargreaves and Nick Wheatley took fifth in the men’s pair; James Chapman, Kit Cunningham-Reid, Nick Purnell and the Australian men’s eight crew finished ninth; Ed de Carvalho placed seventh as part of the Australian lightweight men’s quad scull, and Jeremy McGrath and Kathleen Murdoch claimed ninth in the LTA mixed coxed four.