Olympic champion Helen Glover admitted to overcoming a tough semi-final as her and Polly Swann’s bid for a World Rowing Championship medal now rests on the final in South Korea.
Glover, who won Olympic gold in the women’s pair with Heather Stanning at London 2012, is unbeaten with Swann this season and lived up to their billing with victory in their semi-final.
In a semi-final involving all three Lucerne World Cup medallists, Glover and Swann quickly took the lead before finishing ahead of the pairs from the USA and New Zealand in South Korea.
Glover and Swann were one of six British crews from eight starters on day five to advance to the final and one of three to actually win their semi-final however it wasn’t as easy as it looked.
“When I saw the start list, I knew it was going to be tough, but that felt like a nice controlled race,” said Glover. “We rowed our own race and now we are building towards the final.”
The two other semi-final winning British crews were brothers Richard and Peter Chambers in the lightweight men’s double and Ruth Walczak in the women’s lightweight single scull.
Meanwhile there were second-place finishes for the men’s quadruple scull of Graeme Thomas, Charles Cousins, Sam Townsend and Peter Lambert and Imogen Walsh and Kathryn Twyman in the women’s lightweight double scull.
And the men’s four of Matthew Tarrant, Alan Sinclair, Scott Durant and Nathaniel Reilly O'Donnell completed the successful six British semi-finalists that join the already-qualified men’s and women’s eight and men’s lightweight pair with third place.
However James Foad and Oli Cook were fifth in the men’s pair to miss out and Jamie Kirkwood was fourth in the men’s lightweight single scull however both crews will race again in their respective B finals.
And Foad said: “The start was a little bit messy which was obviously what we didn’t want. From there we found it quite hard to get into our rhythm.
“I am not so much disappointed at how we did but more at how we rowed the race. I think we could have given a little bit better account of ourselves.
“It’s still great to be here and to be in the boat after the season I’ve had. We have been in the boat two weeks and five days and that’s not a lot of time to prepare but now the focus is on the B final and to get as high a ranking as possible.”