Rowing superstars Duncan Free and Drew Ginn teamed with Josh Dunkley-Smith and James Chapman to claim the Men’s Four crown at the Australian Rowing Championships at the West Lakes Regatta Centre in Adelaide.

“We trained well over the past two weeks leading into this regatta so we were confident we would perform well,” said Ginn a three-time Olympic gold medallist.

“The idea was not to worry too much about what the other guys were doing and just look after ourselves. The aim was to keep the boat steady and fast and be really efficient in the first 1000 metres so we were in good shape for the backend and happily that’s how it worked out.”

The Mercantile/University of Queensland/AIS crew of Free, Ginn, Dunkley-Smith and Chapman(6:17:11) finished 4.6 seconds ahead of the Sydney University/AIS crew of Matt Ryan, Fergus Pragnall, Sam Loch and Nick Purnell.

The Melbourne University/Sydney University/VIS crew of Josh Booth, Cameron McKenzie-McHarg, James Marburg and Francis Hegarty finished a further 1.5 second further back in third place.

Ginn’s gold medal partner in the Men’s pair from the Beijing Olympics, Duncan Free, said that while it was a comfortable win, their opponents forced them to work hard.

“There is no question that the standard of the Men’s sweep rowing in Australia is as strong as it has been for many years,” said Free.

“If you looked at the racing in yesterday’s Pair final and today in the Four, you can see that there is not much separating the top guys. It’s going to make it tough to gain selection in the team for the London Olympics.”

Ginn confirmed that both he and Duncan Fee are aiming for selection in the Four for the London Olympics.

“Duncs (Free) and I are both married with children so it’s going to be more manageable for us in a Four than in an Eight but really the focus for all of us is developing two fast boats out of the Men’s sweep program,” said Ginn.

“We’re just trying to position ourselves well in the squad but hopefully we can look to London and work toward achieving two Gold Medals. With the standard of performance we’re seeing in Men’s sweep rowing that’s certainly not out of the question.”

Meanwhile, a thrilling race in the Open Men’s Double Scull saw Beijing Olympic gold medallists, David Crawshay and Scott Brennan, team up once again to claim the national championship.

After taking charge of the race from the first stroke, the pair demonstrated why they are the reigning Olympic champions powering down the course ahead of the five other crews.

The real battle was between the local South Australian crew of James McRae and Chris Morgan in Lane 4 and Daniel Noonan and Karsten Forsterling in Lane 6. Heat winners McRae and Morgan sat just behind Noonan and Forsterling for the majority of the race, but the final 500 metres saw the Adelaide based crew lift their rating to make a move on the Victorians.

However, the Melbourne University/Mosman combination managed to hold on and claim the silver medal by just 0.14 of a second. After a two year break after the Olympic Games, Brennan is back in to training towards London 2012.

“It’s been a pretty tough last couple of months coming back into it,” said Brennan.

“We really didn’t want to have a tight race all the way down the course, yes, we wanted to win, but I guess we wanted to stamp our mark on it and make a bit of a statement.”

“This one was about continuing on from what we had in 2008 and just trying to get back into it,” added Crawshay.

Rowing Australia