Shorten and Scott strike gold at Lucerne World Cup

Northern Ireland’s Rebecca Shorten and Hannah Scott both won gold at the World Rowing Cup in Lucerne.

Shorten stroked the Great Britain women’s four to a comfortable win while Scott and the GB women’s quadruple sculls were involved in a terrific race with the Netherlands and Olympic champions China.

The GB boat was always in front but pulled away in the closing stages for a significant victory.

Shorten and her teammates Samantha Redgrave, Esmee Booth and two-time Olympic champion Helen Glover will head to the Paris Olympics unbeaten this season after winning both World Cups and the European title.

Scott, Lauren Henry, Lola Anderson and Georgie Brayshaw are the current World and European champions.

Both boats will start the Olympic regatta in July as gold medal favourites.

“We’ve started to hear more about the Olympic gold medal that people have been chasing for years, but there’s plenty of people who are just as talented as us and haven’t won it, so it’s definitely about things going right on the day,” said Scott.

“That’s what’s important for us - we have to keep it focused out there, the biggest thing for us is progress, that’s what we’ve been doing every day and that’s why we’ve been building through every race. Hopefully we can keep continuing on and building the speed.”

Two bronze medals for Ireland

Meanwhile Rebecca Edwards and her partner Chloe Brew finished ninth overall in the women’s pair.

The Irish duo of Aifric Keogh and Fiona Murtagh took one of two bronze medals for Ireland in the Olympic boat classes behind the Netherlands and Australia.

Defending lightweight double sculls Olympic champions Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy were competing for the first time this season due to illness and injury but still fought to the end losing out to Italy and Switzerland.

Fermanagh’s Ross Corrigan and partner John Kearney were sixth in the men’s pairs final.