Great Britain selects strongest ever team for Lake Karapiro

Great Britain, currently the world’s leading rowing nation, has selected 19 crews and 61 athletes for the 2010 World Rowing Championships at Lake Karapiro. With five Olympic champions and a further nine Olympic medallists in the line-up, the squad is being described as Britain’s strongest ever team.

There are no major changes to the crews that won the Rowing World Cup again this year during the European regatta season. The selectors have kept faith with the men’s pair of Beijing fours gold medallists Andy Triggs Hodge and Pete Reed, despite a string of successive losses to NZ’s world champions Eric Murray and Hamish Bond. Triggs Hodge and Reed can’t wait to clash again on the Kiwis’ home waters of Lake Karapiro.

"I feel fitter, lighter and just very enthusiastic,” Reed told BBC Sport after the announcement. “I think we’ve got a very, very big race ahead of us. It’s a big ask at the World Championships to turn over a crew that’s beaten us so many times but I’m very positive about it. We’re faster than last year.”

Another eagerly anticipated Kiwi/GB clash will come in the men’s single sculls when world silver medallist Alan Campbell will again challenge four time world champion and friend Mahe Drysdale.

And NZ’s lightweight double sculls world champions Storm Uru and Peter Taylor will be defending their title against Beijing Olympic champions Zak Purchase and Mark Hunter, now back to full fitness after a year out following their Olympic win.

The biggest comeback story in the GB team is the selection of 38 year old Greg Searle, Olympic gold medallist way back in the 1992 Olympic Games in Barcelona. He has won his place in the British eight.

Three time Olympic silver medallist Katherine Grainger and partner Anna Watkins will concentrate on the double scull and not double up in the quadruple scull as they have done through the World Cup regattas.

"It would have been fascinating to try for both events but we want to focus on the double scull in New Zealand to give ourselves the strongest possible chance of success", said Grainger.

To see the full GB team for the 2010 World Rowing Championships, click here