IT was a good start to the World Cup regatta for Coleraine's trio of Olympic medallists yesterday, as brothers Richard and Peter Chambers and Alan Campbell (right) won their respective heats to move into today's semi-finals.
Returning to the scene of their silver medal success last summer at Eton Dorney, the Chambers brothers made a stunning start as Great Britain's lightweight double scull.
Rowing for the first time as a twosome in international competition, Richard and Peter dominated their race moving strongly from the start and by the halfway stage they led by almost seven seconds from another set of brothers, Vincent and Tycho Muda of the Netherlands.
The Chambers siblings eased their way through the second half of the scull finishing in a time of 6:29.86 with the Muda brothers second in 6:32.39.
Norway and Austria won the other two heats - the Austrians also represented by brothers Paul and Bernhard Sieber and these three crews are expected to battle it out for the medals.
Richard said: "I think the main thing for us was to stick to our race plan and to stick to what we've done in training. We did that and it was a pretty simple job, we got into the lead and then maintained it and kept it, trying to conserve as much energy as possible."
In his first appearance at international level since winning the bronze medal at last summer's Olympics, Alan Campbell was also a comfortable winner of his heat of the men's single sculls.
Campbell led from the front and slowed up considerably in the second half of the race to finish in a time of 7:07.03 ahead of Israel's Oleg Gonorovski.
Afterwards, Campbell described himself as "very happy" with how the race unfolded.
"I got a really nice start, a really good opener," he said.
"It's not every day you get an Olympic champion alongside you and it was a good opener."
The other two heats were won by London 2012 silver medalist Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic and former world champion, Marcel Hacker from Germany who recently finished first and second in the European Championships.
Campbell will use them as his yardstick to see what kind of form he is in heading into the third and final World Cup event in Lucerne in three weeks time and then the World Championships in Korea in August.