ROWING WORLD CUP: Searle believes British eight is coming good after silver

Posted: Sunday 27th May 2012 | 15:13

VETERAN Greg Searle believes Great Britain's eight have world champions Germany in their sights after an encouraging silver at the Rowing World Cup in Lucerne.

Searle, who is looking to win a second Olympic gold 20 years after his first in 1992, joined forces with Alex Partridge, Marcus Bateman, Tom Ransley, Moe Sbihi, Ric Egington, Matt Langridge, James Foad and cox Phelan Hill.

And they finished just one second behind Germany, unbeaten since 2009, and just ahead of Olympic champions Canada.

“It was good to be that close the Germans and very exciting but we all know that we still have more to find," said Searle.

"This crew is moving on every time we race."

Searle admitted the crew were shocked into action by their failure to advance directly to the final from the heats but Foad insisted they were better for an extra race in the repechage.

"The plan was to get out with the field and either lead it or be well in the race after 500m and then settle in to a nice strong rhythm," he said.

"We have some powerful guys in the boat and when they are all working together you can really feel it. It feels quite overwhelming the amount of power we have but I think we tried to overdo it a little bit in the last 300 metres.

“We know what we can do in training so it is a case of getting it right on the day, which we haven’t done this weekend - although we got most of it right."

Great Britain won three Olympic class golds in Lucerne - the men's four, women's pair and women's double sculls all following up on their successes earlier in the month in Belgrade.

“We said it would be tougher here and that’s been proven," said David Tanner, GB Rowing's performance director.

“We have still had some outstanding performances and I’m really pleased with how it has gone."