Australian rowing has witnessed important change after a disappointing Paris Olympics and an even more damning review, with its chief executive insisting the sport in this country is on the way up.
While Australia's entire team registered its best gold medal haul at Paris in 2024, its rowers slumped to their worst Olympic result since the Seoul 1988 Games, winning just one bronze medal.
After the poor showing, Rowing Australia commissioned an independent review to find out why things had gone wrong for one of the country's most successful sports.
It found there had been a "culture of fear and repercussion" in the high-performance program.
Sarah Cook - a dual-Olympian and the organisation's boss - said reading the athletes' experiences was "awful", and she needed to ensure things would transform.
"I'm really excited for 2026. It's been a big period of change. We obviously are on a bit of a rebuild," Cook told AAP.
"The athlete's voice is incredibly important to me, so I wanted to make sure that we really leaned into that in an open, honest and transparent way.
"There's no doubt that the sport always goes in cycles, and there are ebbs and flows. In Paris, we didn't have the results that we hoped for."
An overhaul of leadership within the elite program has followed, with Olympic gold medallist Chris O'Brien becoming coach of the men's team and Briton James Harris - a Paris silver medallist - taking charge of the women.
Cook said it was "critical" to bring in new leadership.
"(I asked) do we have the right people ... support, staff, leaders, administrators, coaches? That was the area we had the opportunity to really get into," she said.
"We've got some great momentum now to build forward."
Cook says "green shoots" are already appearing as the men's eight won the prestigious Grand Challenge Cup in England last July.
Also, 29 debutants featured in Australia's 40-strong team at last year's world championships in Shanghai.
However, only para athletes made the podium, with Olympic medallist Erik Horrie winning bronze in the PR1 scull, while the PR3 mixed double of Lisa Greissl and Sam Stunell also secured a third placed finish.
Cook said the para program had gone from strength to strength after winning two medals at the Paris Paralympics, which included a gold for Nikki Ayers and Jed Altschwager in the PR3 mixed double sculls.
In coastal rowing, a sport set to debut at the LA Olympics, Australia claimed its first world championship medal when the mixed coxed quad won bronze last November in Turkey.
Cook said 2027 would be "the crucial year because that's Olympic qualification".
"We'll certainly look at the world championships this year with a very close eye, but 2027 is where it gets serious," she said.
