John Smith and Lawrence Brittain can take a bow… the two under-23 rowers have won South Africa’s first ever gold medal at a world championship.

Our national team has just returned from the World Under-23 Championships in Brest, Belarus and the two won gold in the men’s pairs event.

The SA team was made up of five rowers and three officials.

The story of how they struck gold started with them winning their heat in the fastest time of the three heats which took them through to the semi-finals. After a day’s break the duo again set the pace with the fastest of the two semis taking them into the A final.

Said national coach Roger Barrow: “South Africa stuck with their same race plan and by the 1000-metre mark had a one length lead on the rest of the field. Canada came back at them with 250m to go but SA still had another gear to give and crossed the line in first place with Canada, Romania, Germany, France and Serbia behind them.”

Brittain, 20, went to Parktown Boys and came seventh at the Under-23 World Championships in 2009. Smith is a product of St Albans College and was fourth in the same event at last year’s championships.

Also medalling at the championships was Kirsten McCann who nabbed bronze in the women’s lightweight scull.

After struggling to find her pace in her heat, she ended sixth but came out firing the next day in the repecharge, winning it to make the semi-final.

She needed a top three finish in the semi-final to make the A-Final which she did, placing second.

Says Barrow: “In the A-Final nothing changed in Kirsten’s approach, going out hard from the beginning and sitting in the silver position all the way down the course coming into the final sprint for the line with Japan just pipping Kirsten into third. Belarus won and Canada were fourth.”

A product of St Andrews in Bedfordview, Gauteng, McCann,21, was at the Beijing Olympics in 2008, placing 13th in the lightweight women’s double. As a junior she came sixth at junior world champs (double scull) then fourth the following year in the women’s single.

Our other contestants in Brest were the women’s pairs of Claire Bode and Kate Christowitz and they went on to place fourth in the A-Final.

“This was a big step up for the girls as in 2009 Claire and Kate also teamed up in the pair and came fifth at the Junior world championships.  This is Kate and Claire’s first year at Under-23 and if this result is anything to go by, great things are to come from these two.”

Summing up the championships, Barrow said: This is certainly one of the most successful tours that South Africa has ever had, with three entries into the event we end up with a fourth, bronze medal and gold medal. Congratulations must go to the support team (Andrew Grant, Ben Tipney and Nicola McCleod) on how they prepared the crews for the event.

“Rowing is very small in South Africa and this shows that we are able to win medals at the very highest level.  Some of these athletes will have their sights set on 2012 in London and beyond. There is no reason with this sort of performance that they can’t aim for the top and I’m very pleased to see that the high performance programme is working.”

Our rowers returned some respectful performances from the World Cup regatta in Munich, Germany, just reward for some hard winter’s training.

The four Olympic class crews were in Germany for the first of two international World Cup meetings, the second of which is in Lucerne, Switzerland. Slotted in between is a training camp in Greece.

The team featured a real blend of youth and experience, ranging from Olympic veterans Ramon di Clemente and Shaun Keeling to the new women’s pairing of Lee-Anne Persse and Hayley Arthur.

It was Persse and Arthur’s first international race and they managed to make the C final.

Said national coach, Roger Barrow, on tour with the crews: “They were fourth in their first heat, just beating Bulgaria. The rep in the afternoon didn’t go well, with steering problems putting hem well off the pace from the beginning. This result saw them going into the C final.’

It went a whole lot better in the final. “A much better race,” says Barrow. “They put their bow in from the middle stages. In the last 100 metres, Ukraine came back at them but then Lee-Anne and Hayley went again and won the race from Ukraine, Bulgaria, China and Germany. With all the multiple country entries in the event, SA ended up with a ranking of eighth, good racing for the girls in their first regatta.”

It wasn’t that good for Di Clemente and Keeling in the pairs. A bad start saw the boat stopping and once they got moving they had a massive four lengths to make up on the field and this pretty much set the tone for their regatta. “They ended up going through all the rounds being second in the heat, semi-final and then sixth in the final. Not a good result for the pair but their final ranking was fifth.”

Our sole men’s skull representative was Peter Lambert. He had a good heat, moving through to the quarter-final where he placed fifth which put him directly the D Final. He needed a third spot if he was to qualify for the semi-final. He came up trumps in the D Final, crossing the line first in spite of a fast finish from Mexico on the line. His final ranking was 16th.

The other crew in action were the men’s lightweight fours of Matthew Brittain, James Thompson, Lawrence Ndlovu and Andrew Polasek. They had a good heat, placing second. In the semi-final, they were fourth off the start and pushed hard in the middle stages to move up to third.

But Britain, Czech Republic and Austria then kept their half-length lead and saw SA placing fourth and going into the B-Final. In that race a slow start by SA saw them never quite keeping pace and they once again ended fourth to earn themselves a final ranking of fourth.

“We’re now at our training camp in Greece,” says Barrow. “It’s going well and we’re all training very hard.”

Already having won the heavyweight coxless pairs with Shaun Keeling on Saturday, Di Clemente’s next medal came in the fours.

It was a cracker of a race as Di Clemente and Keeling teamed up with Lawrence Brittain and John Smith.

Up against them was the lightweight crew of Lawrence Ndlovu, James Thompson, Matthew Britain and Andrew Polasek.

The lead changed four times during the course of the race, with the final winning margin being just a metre.

In the last 500m of the 1,500m dice, the Di Clemente crew upped their stroke rate to 40 and the lighweights couldn’t match this.

Said national coach Roger Barrow: “There’s no doubt that this race was the race of the weekend.”

National coach Roger Barrow said: “They rowed the heat this morning which they won comfortably from their team mates Lawrence Brittain and John Smith, posting the fastest time.

“In the final they lead comfortably by the halfway point, they were able to move on with the pressure off.

“At the end the rest of the field came back at them, but still remained in front controlling the race.

“In second and third place were the two lightweight pairs of James Thompson and Lawrence Ndlovu, and Matthew Brittain and Andrew Polasek who make up the lightweight four. John Smith and Lawrence Brittain were a close fourth.”

The latest win means that it was an incredible 13th title for Di Clemente in this event and Keeling’s third.

At 35, Di Clemente is a veteran of the national rowing scene, with Keeling 12 years his junior.

This weekend’s action will be just another step, make that stroke, in their pursuit of medal glory at the 2012 Olympic Games in London.

Back in Beijing the pair ended a creditable fifth, just two spots outside the medal podium.

Four years prior to that Di Clemente, who made his Olympic debut 10 years ago in Sydney, and previous partner Ramon Cech took bronze in the Athens Olympics.

Rowing with Cech, Di Clemente has won two silvers and two bronze at World Championships events. And he also won gold at the Commonwealth Regatta in Scotland four years ago.

Both Di Clemente and Keeling are based at the High Performance Centre in Pretoria where they are in constant search of that “perfect stroke” needed for rowing glory. Di Clemente will be gunning for an amazing 13th title in the coxless pairs at Roodeplaat.

Making it that much easier has been the help of Italian rowing guru Gianni Postilione who has been dissecting every aspect of their performance.

Di Clemente told Pretoria News sports editor Lester Mills recently: “Getting everything together in one package is the ultimate goal, of course that hardly ever happens though.

“But we will look to take things step by step and get as close as we can to getting all the aspects of our game right.”

Postilione added his view: “Of course there are things they can improve on, but they are technicalities” and firmly believes the pair have the potential to improve on the Olympic and World Championship successes of recent years.

The course will be conducted by FISA Classifier trainers Judy Morrison and Simon Goodey.

The first two days of the course will feature the classsification process and medical and technical assessment and the third and final day will be a practical exercise.

Venue will be the RowSA offices at 132 Jan Smuts Avenue in Parkwood for the first two days before moving on to Victoria Lake, Germiston (venue to be confirmed).

The course is free of charge but can only accommodate a limited number of applicants so the closing date for applications is 26 March.

RSVP: Lynette Govender at: lynetteg@medikredit.co.za

Beijing Olympians Ramon di Clemente and Shaun Keeling placed sixth in the men’s pairs A-final. It wasn’t their finest display to date and not on a par with their normal undoubted skill levels.

The lightweight pair combination of Matthew Brittain and John Smith came fourth in their A-final, a really good row from this young crew and it certainly bodes well for the future.

In the men’s lightweight scull Lawrence Ndlovu came third in the B-final giving him a final ranking of ninth at the championships.  That’s an excellent result when considering that this is his first year in this boat class.

Men’s lightweight double scull James Thompson and Andrew Polasek placed sixth in the B-final giving them a final ranking of 12th at the championships. This is a new boat which needs more work.

In the men’s scull Peter Lambert ended second in the C-final to give him a ranking of 14th.

As national coach, Roger Barrow put it: “All in all a good performance from team South Africa with such a young team. However it must be noted that no medals were won and work will began in three weeks time for the team to start preparing for 2010.”

Competing in the first semi-final the duo placed third to qualify automatically for the A-Final.

The race was won by Peter Reed and Andrew Hodge, part of a former Olympic Champion four and right now, considered their country’s top men’s boat.

Recently back from an Italian training camp, Reed and Hodge were in control of the race from the start, crusing to victory with a relaxed 35-stroke rate. Greece’s Nikolaos and Apostolos Kgountalas worked through to secure second spot as the South African crew came charging down the outside, working off a 41-stroke rate.

The South Africans narrowly beat out Serbia for third spot and now meet Britain, Greece, New Zealand, France and the US in Sunday’s final.

After Lawrence Ndlovu, our men’s lightweight single scull, won his second round repechage to go through to Friday’s semi-final on Saturday against opponents from New Zealand, Greece, Britain, Japan and Italy he said: “Each race seems to get better and better, I feel that I am learning something new each time I race with the best”

Said coach Roger Barrow: “Today we got another two great results. First it was the men’s lightweight pair of Matthew Brittain and John Smith. John  is one of the youngest competitors at the world championships  (only 19 years old).  They won the rep in a fast time of 6:38 and go into the A-final on Sunday.”

According to Barrow, the cracker race had to be the lightweight men’s double which is a highly contested event.

“James Thompson and Andrew Polasek had to finish in the top two places to move onto the semi-final on Friday.  They did  this with a very fast start, being able to maintain their position down the courseand  holding off a fast USA to the line.”

Peter Lambert also raced in the C/D semi-final which would give him a ranking of 13 to 24.  He came second in his semi-final so he will race  in the C-final on Friday.

As matters stand we now have 1 A-final and 3 A/B semi-finals, and 1 C final.

The A and B finals are rowed on Saturday and Sunday and already our Olympic pairing of Ramon Di Clemente and Shaun Keeling are through the first round and will race the semi-final on Thursday where they will come up against Britain, Greece, Serbia, Czech Republic and Poland.

The first three in the semi-final go through to the A final.

Lawrence Ndlovu, our men’s lightweight single scull, won his second round repechage and goes through to the semi-final on Saturday against opponents from New Zealand, Greece, Britain, Japan and Italy. Once again its the first three through to the A-Final.

The lightweight double scull combo of James Thompson and Andrew Polasek have also gone through the first round and will race repechage Wednesday where they need to come in the top two to go to the semi-final.

Matthew Brittain and John Smith, in the lightweight pairs have gone through the first round to Wednesday’s repechage and also need a top two finish. Scull Peter Lamber, came third in his rep Wednesday and races the C/D semi-finals Wednesday which will decide the final.

Teach coach Roger Barrow says the team have raced well, but the next three days are very important to set up the finals.