By Canadian Press

Canadian rowers Hillary Janssens and Caileigh Filmer win world championship

Sep 15, 2018 | 10:17 AM

PLOVDIV, Bulgaria — Canada’s Hillary Janssens and Caileigh Filmer have captured gold at the world rowing championships.

Janssens, of Cloverdale, B.C., and Filmer, from Victoria, won the women’s pair final on Saturday, finishing just over two seconds ahead of reigning world champions Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler of New Zealand.

Janssens’s and Filmer’s time of 6 minutes 50.67 seconds shattered a 12-year-old Canadian record at a world event.

“It is such an amazing feeling to finally achieve exactly what we had been imagining — racing against the world’s best and winning,” said Janssens. “We knew it would be tight with New Zealand. We put in a lot of work improving our last 500 metres and knew we had it in us to row out in front.”

It was the first year together for the pair. They won gold and silver at previous World Cup events.

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“We are still a very young team so we will keep working hard over the winter to ensure we keep getting better and faster,” Janssens said. 

The win brought Canada’s medal total to three at the worlds with one day to go in the competition. Canada races in three A-finals on Sunday.

Two other Canadian crews just missed the podium on Saturday.

Mackenzie Copp of London, Ont., and Taylor Perry of Ancaster, Ont., finished fourth in the men’s pair.

“We are happy with what we have done this week in the time we have been together,” said Perry. “We had a goal of having our best piece and we both believe we executed that.”

Andrew Todd, Baileigh Hooper, Victoria Nolan, Kyle Fredrickson and coxswain Laura Court came fourth in the PR3 mixed coxed four final.

The Canadian Press