Olympic champion Purchase to miss World Cup opener

OLYMPIC champion Zac Purchase will miss the season's first World Cup regatta after failing to recover from an illness.

ABSENT: Olympic champion Zac Purchase has failed to recover from an untimely illness and will win the opening World Cup regatta of the season in Spain (Getty Images)

With Purchase's Beijing partner Mark Hunter taking a year off, the 23 year-old had planned to compete in the lightweight single scull in Banyoles, Spain later this month.

However, his place will now be taken by Adam Freeman-Pask.

A total of 18 senior crews plus an U23 women's pair will race on the course which staged the 1992 Olympic Games.

And while the names are familiar, the line-ups are not.

Three-time Olympic silver medallist Katherine Grainger will go it alone for the first time in the single sculls while Andy Triggs Hodge and Peter Reed - gold medallists in the men's four in Beijing - compete in a new-look pair.

British Rowing confirmed it will field a men's four and eight - the former including Olympic men's eight silver medallists Alex Partridge, Richard Egington and Matt Langridge as well as newcomer Alex Gregory.

The eight will be stroked by James Clarke, a world champion in the lightweight men's four in 2007, who has decided to race this season as an open weight rower.

"I am really looking forward to the start of the 2009 racing season. We have some truly outstanding rowers, some of whom are racing in fresh combinations," said Great Britain performance director David Tanner.

"I'm sure that this season will be one of rebuilding but also one with some exciting potential".