Forty-eight-year-old father-of-two John Keogh began rowing at Queechy High School and progressed through North Esk and Tamar to national teams and world championships before embarking on a hugely successful international coaching career with Britain (at the 2008 Olympics), Canada (in London 2012 and Rio de Janeiro 2016) and now Australia.

Keogh said he is looking forward to seeing his four female crews compete at the world championships in Sarasota, Florida.

“As a group we talk about keeping it simple and getting back to basics and this event is not any different,” he said. 

“When you have a major competition coming up it’s not a chance to reinvent the wheel, it’s a chance to practice what you’ve been doing all year round, the basics.

“The crews have done an amazing job of getting going on the ground and that speaks volumes for the athletes but also the great support staff we have travelling with the team, both in preparing the team back in Australia and here in the US.”

All three Australian crews in action on day one had strong races and secured berths in their semi-finals or A-finals. 

The men’s four and coxed pair won their heats and the women’s quadruple scull finished second.

“There’s a little bit of an unknown in racing some of these crews but we knew the Dutch would be good, based upon what they’ve done in the past and how they were in Lucerne,” Keogh said. 

“I think to qualify for the A-final, which was our targets today, is pretty exciting. For the girls it’s their first senior world championships A-final.

“They raced really well and had a good profile for the second 500 which is something we’d been keen to rectify through the year. Between now and the final, we’ll be out there trying to get a little bit better each day.”

Huon’s Sarah Hawe is hopeful her crew’s world cup performances will translate into world championship success.

The 30-year-old was due to start her campaign in the early hours of Tuesday morning (Tastime) with her women’s four crew fresh from back-to-back gold medals in the last two world cup regattas.

Drawn in lane six alongside home favourites USA as well as the Netherlands and Great Britain, the Australian crew is taking nothing for granted.

“Our performances in the world cups is very confidence-boosting coming into the world champs but I suppose we can’t write off the opposition,” Hawe said. 

“Other countries might have changed or tweaked their crews a bit so we are still going in with the same attitude we had back when we went into Poland, no expectations.

“We are be about trying to put down the best performance that we can and hopefully that brings us back the gold. I am very excited to be here, I’ve never been to such a large event so it’s great to experience the event, the excitement and to see what we can do on a world stage.”

Huon clubmate Georgia Nesbitt, 25, is the other Tasmanian competitor in a lightweight women's quad crew also embarking on its heat on Tuesday morning.