Kiwi Olympic Champs Spoors and Francis Headline Trans-Tasman Super Crew for Golden Oar

  • Kiwi Olympic Champs Spoors and Francis Headline Trans-Tasman Super Crew for Golden Oar image

Lucy Spoors, Brooke Francis, Alex Hill and Angus Dawson unite for Golden Oar 2026 Mixed Quad racing

Golden Oar is thrilled to announce four of Australia and New Zealand’s most accomplished rowers have put aside their trans-Tasman rivalry to team up for the Golden Oar. New Zealand’s Paris Olympic Champions, Lucy Spoors and Brooke Francis, are joining forces with Australia’s Olympic Champion from Tokyo, Alex Hill, and dual Olympian and multiple-time World Championship medallist Angus Dawson, to form one of the strongest on-paper crew line-ups of the 2026 event. The combination adds yet another crew to the event’s Open Mixed Quad competition, a category already overflowing with generational rowing talent.

Lucy Spoors, a two-time Olympian, won silver in the women’s eight at Tokyo 2020 before striking gold in the double sculls alongside Brooke Francis at Paris 2024 — a result that made the pair the first crew of mothers to win an Olympic rowing medal. Spoors also won World Championship gold in the eight in 2019 and bronze in the same boat class in 2017.

Brooke Francis (née Donoghue), Spoors’s Paris 2024 gold-medal-winning partner, is a two-time World Champion in the double sculls (2017 and 2019) and also claimed World Championship silver in 2018. A two-time Olympian, Francis won silver in the double sculls at Tokyo 2020 before completing her set with Olympic gold in Paris.

Spoors and Francis returned to international racing for the first time since Paris earlier this year, winning The Stonor Challenge Trophy at the 2026 Henley Royal Regatta — a result that showed the Olympic champions have lost none of their speed.

Alex Hill OAM, a three-time Olympian, stroked Australia’s men’s coxless four to gold at Tokyo 2020, having won silver in the same boat class at Rio 2016. A two-time World Champion (2017 and 2018) in the coxless four, Hill added a further World Championship silver in 2026, teaming up with Angus Dawson in the coxless pair at the Amsterdam Worlds.

Angus Dawson, a two-time Olympian who raced in the Australian men’s eight at both Tokyo 2020 and Paris 2024, won World Championship bronze in the eight in 2023. In 2026, Dawson partnered Hill to silver in the coxless pair at the World Championships in Amsterdam.

This trans-Tasman pairing joins a rapidly growing field confirmed for Golden Oar 2026, alongside the Irish trio of Fintan McCarthy, Philip Doyle and Margaret Cremen, racing in an Irish-Kiwi composite crew with New Zealand’s Ella Cossill, and Croatian legends Martin and Valent Sinković, three-time Olympic gold medallists, who return to Australian water for a second year alongside Australian Olympians Tara Rigney and Laura Gourley.

Canberra’s premier international rowing festival, presented by Canberra Airport and hosted by Red Shed, takes place from 30 October to 1 November on the iconic waters of Lake Burley Griffin at Black Mountain Peninsula.

For more details, visit goldenoar.com.au or follow on Instagram

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Entries close October 23 – Enter Here

  • Open Mixed Quad
  • Masters Mixed Quad
  • Club Mixed Quad
  • Under 19 Mixed Coxed Quad
  • PR3 Mixed Double
  • Open Mixed Double
  • Club Mixed Eight