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NZ’s most successful women’s rower retires


Three-time Olympic medal winner and five-time senior rowing World Championship Kerri Williams, 30 has retired from the sport.


At the Paris Games in July, she became just the fourth New Zealand woman to win gold, silver and bronze medals at an Olympics, alongside Barbara Kendall, Dame Valerie Adams and Zoi Sadowski-Synnott.


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But the time has come to rest and recharge.


“Mind and body wise, I'm ready for a change,” says Kerri. “I probably could have kept going, but I'm satisfied with where I'm at and what I’ve achieved and it's time to do something else.”


Williams was stroke of the Women’s Four, with her sister Jackie Gowler, Davina Waddy and Phoebe Spoors, which finished third just 0.44sec ahead of Romania.


“I'm really proud of us as a crew for what we put out there that day,” says Kerri. “We just constantly had to step and step and step. I was like, ‘Wow, how many more gears do we have?’ I guess that's the cool thing, I've constantly surprised myself throughout my career that there's often another gear that you don't think is there.”


In 2019, Williams and Grace Prendergast became the first New Zealand female athletes to win a World Rowing Championship title in two events in the same year, the Women’s Pair and Eight.


It was New Zealand’s first World Championship win in the Women’s Eight.


She and Predergast backed that performance up at the Tokyo Olympics with a gold medal in the Pair and silver in the Eight.



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