Taranaki crews put in the hard yards on day one of Maadi finals
The Taranaki camp had three crews competing on the morning of day one of Maadi Cup finals against fierce competition.
Sacred Heart’s Ella Toa and Zoe Winks started the morning well for the Taranaki crews, taking out the U18 girls doubles B final in a dominant performance.
The pair made a strong start, building a good lead heading into the 750 metre mark.
By the one kilometre mark, Cambridge High were challenging strongly.
“They’re absolutely flying” was the call from the loud speaker, as it built to a nail-biting second half of the race. It stayed close until the 1750 mark, when Toa and Winks found an extra gear and blitzed the last 250 metres, comfortably taking the victory by four seconds.
The trend was continued by Georgia Keech in the girls U16 singles A final, with a performance that saw her add a silver medal to her collection.
Keech made a good start, trailing only the rower from Aotea College out of the blocks.
At the 750 metre mark, Keech pushed strongly and gained ground on the frontrunner.
The rower from Ashburton College went at the same time as Keech and had caught the lead rower by the half way mark.
Keech found herself firmly in second position by the 1750 mark as it seemed the rower from Aotea had gone too hard too early.
Second is where she stayed as the rower from Ashburton simply had too much speed going to the line.
Finally, the in-form Francis Douglas crew of Bodie Butler and Mason Porteous took on the U18 novice doubles, but couldn’t match the speed of the other crews.
Four crews jumped out ahead of the rest early on and by the half way mark there was a tight battle for first and a tight battle for third.
Butler and Porteous maintained a consistent pace in the early going, but were unable to catch the leading crews in the second half of the race.
The pair never gave up, however, which showed on their faces as they crossed the finish line with a grimace.
