Emily Craig may have failed to trouble the podium at last week’s rowing World Championships alongside Kat Copeland but the latter is confident their partnership has the potential to bear significant fruit further down the line.

After clinching bronze at May’s European Championships just weeks after being paired together, the British duo placed fifth in the women’s lightweight double sculls final in Sarasota-Bradenton, on Saturday.

That result brought an end to Craig’s recent World Championship medal run, after winning silver in the lightweight women’s quadruple scull in 2015 and then gold 12 months later.

Craig, of Mark Cross, is still a relative fresh face in the British squad compared to that of Copeland, who made history by helping Britain win its first ever Olympic women’s lightweight double sculls title at London 2012.

But the two-time Olympian believes the chemistry in the boat between her and Craig is already showing plenty of promising signs ahead of the countdown to Tokyo 2020.

“We were put together just before the Europeans, so every day we’re learning together and getting better with each race that comes,” said Copeland, speaking on behalf of SAS, the official analytics partner of British Rowing. The national team is analysing its data, using SAS technology, to ultimately help make the boats go faster.

“It’s important to have that good balance, you can be as good a rower as anyone but if you don’t have that connection with someone in the boat then it’s meaningless – thankfully we have that.

“We’ve always had quite a lot of depth in the competition, last year we lost a few people but I think that’s no different to what we’ve seen in the past.

“We’ve got a lot of people coming through and Emily is among them, she’s already got a couple of medals at the World Championships and we’re keen to keep moving that forward.”

With this year the first of the new Olympic cycle, the World Championships was always going to represent something of a fact-finding mission for many of the British team, with boat formations taking shape and younger stars emerging from the shadows of retired athletes.

Craig and Copeland were two of those to be put together earlier this season, with Craig having also teamed up with Maddie Arlett to win bronze at the opening World Cup of 2017.

But Copeland appears to favour her new partner, having already identified where they can build upon their World Championship showing, together.

“There’s a long way to go into the Olympiad, we’ve got time to build on that and that’s what things like these World Championships are doing,” she added.

“Getting to the A final was good progress, we’re very mixed on the result and it is a step in the right direction for us.

“Getting competitive was the most important thing for us, getting a medal would obviously have been nice but it’s clear to us where those improvements are to be made and how we can go about making ourselves better.

“But this is a massive step up, last year we had a few things go wrong, which happens, but we keep improving.” 

Kat Copeland was speaking on behalf of SAS – the leader in analytics software and services. SAS is the Official Analytics Partner of British Rowing. Further information at www.sas.com