Rio 2016 Olympics - There's no time to celebrate for Olympic silver medal-winning women's rowing pair Rebecca Scown and Genevieve Behrent.
Rebecca Scown and Genevieve Behrent with their medals on the podium of the Women's Pair rowing final at Lagoa stadium in Rio. Photo: AFP
Scown and Behrent overcame a slow start start to power home for second place, half a boat length behind defending champions Great Britain.
They were in last place in the first 500m, but fought back to fourth at the midway point, and to third at the 1500m mark.
In the final quarter they went hard at Denmark, passing them to claim the second spot, a half a boat length behind defending champions Great Britain.
New Zealand's women's pair - Rebecca Scown, left, and Genevieve Behrent - rowing in the semifinals. Photo: AFP
"You put so much work into it and not everyone gets something to show for it. To get a silver medal is amazing," Scown said.
However with Scown and Behrent both involved in the women's eight tomorrow Rowing New Zealand's high-performance director Alan Cotter said it would be straight into recovery mode as the loss of two days of competition made it a tight schedule.
"They're on the bike doing recovery because they've got the race in the eights ... so they will have four races in three days ... and that's just what it is and what we've got to put up with," he said.
"It certainly wasn't planned that way but everything closed up [the schedule] because of the bad weather and that's just what you have got to deal with," said Cotter.
Scown has previously won an Olympic bronze medal, two world titles, two world bronze medals as well as a world silver medal.
Behrent has won the silver medal twice as part of the women's eight at the U23 World Championships in 2010 and 2011.
New Zealand now has a gold and a silver at the rowing after men's pair Hamish Bond and Eric Murray won gold yesterday.
The country's current medal sits at one gold and five silvers.
A warm celebration for the top 2 crews - silver for NZ! #BeTheInspiration pic.twitter.com/apCMFxNI0N
— NZ Olympic Team (@nzolympics) August 12, 2016
While there was joy for Behrent and Scown, it was disappointment for world champion lightweight women's double sculls Julia Edward and Sophie McKenzie.
They were never in contention in their race and finished a couple of boat lengths behind third.
Cotter said they simply failed to get into their rhythm but was at a loss as to why they failed to fire in Rio after good performances in recent World Cup events and a good training programme.
"Racing at the Olympics is very different to racing at world cup or world champs with different pressures that you have got to deal with and they would have loved to have got a medal."
- RNZ
