Helen Glover and Heather Stanning of Great Britain (silver), Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown of New Zealand (gold), Sarah Tait and Kate Hornsey of Australia (bronze) celebrate with their medals after the Women's Pair final during day five of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

New Zealand is strongly represented by crews at the rowing world championships in Slovenia.

The New Zealand men's eight make a splash in their heat.

A phalanx of nations are in Slovenia to contest medals at the rowing world championships.

A swan makes way on Lake Bled as crews prepare for the rowing world championships.

A men's double sculls combination go through their paces at the world championships on Lake Bled.

New Zealand adaptive single sculler Danny McBride on the way to winning his heat.

Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter of Great Britain (centre) and Storm Uru and Peter Taylor of New Zealand (bottom) compete in a Men's Lightweight Double Sculls quarter final during day four of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

(top to bottom) New Zealand, Poland, The Netherlands, Germany, USA and Ukraine compeate in the Men's Eight semi-finals during day four of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Jade Uru, Ben Hammond, James Dallinger, Chris Harris of New Zealand compeate in the Men's Four repacharge race during day four of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Peter Chambers and Kieren Emery of Great Britian celebrate victory in the Men's Lightweight Pair final during day five of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Members of the Ukraine Men's Eight crew celebrate winning the B final and qualifying for the London 2012 Olympics. The New Zealand Eight are in the foreground.

Stesha Carle, Natalie Dell, Adrienne Martelli, Megan Kalmoe of the USA (silver), Julia Richter, Tina Manker, Stephanie Schiller, Britta Oppelt of Germany (gold), Sarah Gray, Louise Trappitt, Fiona Bourke, Eve MacFarlane of New Zealand (bronze) celebrate with their medals after the Women's Quadruple Sculls final during day five of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown of New Zealand (front) just edge out Helen Glover and Heather Stanning of Great Britain to win the Women's Pair final during day five of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown of New Zealand celebrate with their gold medals after victory in the Women's Pair final during day five of the FISA Rowing World Championships at Lake Bled.

Kerry Hore and Kim Crow of Australia (silver) Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger of Great Britain (gold) Fiona Paterson and Anna Reymer of New Zealand (bronze) celebrate with their medals after the women's double sculls final.

Eric Murray and Hamish Bond of New Zealand celebrate victory over Pete Reed and Andrew Triggs Hodge of Great Britain in the men's pair final.

Eric Murray and Hamish Bond of New Zealand celebrate victory over Pete Reed and Andrew Triggs Hodge of Great Britain in the men's pair final.

Ekaterina Karsten of Bulgaria (silver) Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic (gold) Emma Twigg of New Zealand (bronze) pose with their medals after the women's single sculls final.

Storm Uru and Peter Taylor of New Zealand pose with their silver medals after the Lightweight Men's Double Sculls final.

They left it late, but Kiwis Juliette Haigh and Rebecca Scown are world champions again.

The duo defended their women's pair title at the world rowing championships in Bled, Slovenia in dramatic fashion, moments before the young New Zealand women's quad won the bronze medal.

Haigh and Scown trailed British pair Helen Glover and Heather Stanning throughout the race.

The two boats were far too strong for the rest of the crews and as early as 500m it was clear where the top two medals were going to go.

But the Brits looked the most comfortable in the lead, until the Kiwis upped their effort in the sprint to the line.

Haigh and Scown won the event last year at Lake Karapiro ahead of Glover and Stanning, but even with 50m to go the medals looked set to swap.

But the Kiwis found that little something extra and finished furiously, only passing the Brits in the final metres to win by just eight one hundredths of a second.

The women's quad of Eve Macfarlane, Fiona Bourke, Louise Trappitt and Sarah Gray punched above their weight to take third place behind winners Germany - last year's bronze medallists - and the United States.

The Kiwis were more than a second ahead of the fourth-placed Australians.

The young New Zealand quad is still in the development phase, but already look a medal chance at next year's Olympics on current form.

James Lassche and Graham Oberlin Brown did what they had to do in the lightweight men's pairs finals and raced off into an early lead - a move which looked to have taken the field by surprise as it took them over 1000m to claw the Kiwis back.

Ultimately, the pair paid the price as the other crews from Great Britain, Italy and Germany had more left in the tank and found a way through, leaving the Kiwis fourth at the finish.

Earlier, two Kiwi medal hopes cruised into their finals. Ashburton's Duncan Grant was never pushed as he won his men's lightweight single scull semifinal and remains on track to win his fourth world championships gold.

Double scull defending champions Nathan Cohen and Joseph Sullivan also won their semifinal and remain favourites for back to back gold medals.

The men's eight finished fourth in the B final and missed out on the last automatic qualification spot for next year's Olympics.

They were a long way behind early, but lifted their rate to be second with 500m to go, only to fade in the last 200m.

Tirau's Danny McBride, New Zealand's men's adaptive single sculler, failed to qualify for the A final, missing out by two tenths of a second.

McBride, who won bronze at Karapiro last year, has battled injury and illness ahead of the semifinal.

The women's lightweight double scull quarterfinal set to feature Louise Ayling and Lucy Strack was scrapped when two crews withdrew from the event. Their semifinal is now on Saturday.