A NAME like Zac Purchase deserves instant recall. But it may have slipped your mind that the most impressive performance at last year’s world rowing championships at Dorney Lake, near Eton, came not from Great Britain’s coxless four but from a self-effacing lightweight sculler who had spent much of his summer nursing a hand injury.

Purchase looked as surprised as everyone else when he became a world champion at the age of 20, but shrewd judges had been warning of a prodigious talent in the sculling ranks and a straightforward demolition of the field at Dorney did nothing to argue the opposite case. Purchase had, after all, been the under23 world sculling champion, too.

The first World Cup regatta of the season, this weekend in Linz, will reveal a lot more about Purchase’s ability to turn world championship gold into Olympic gold in Beijing. The single sculls is not one of the two Olympic events for lightweights, so Purchase has formed a double with another highly talented sculler in Mark Hunter. On their first competitive outing in Linz, the Siemens-sponsored combination rowed solidly and confidently to win their heats and semi-final to go into today’s final as firm favourites.

Scullers are singular types at the best of times. Peter Haining, another world champion who had the misfortune to be born the wrong weight, was the best sculler in the country for a decade without anyone noticing. He was so devoted to the cause he spent his spare time restoring the graves of forgotten Victorian rowers. Purchase does not show quite such obvious signs of obsession, but he is a talented saxophone player, didn’t really understand the team dynamics of a quadruple scull and was blissfully contented rowing his own boat through a truncated but ultimately successful campaign last summer.

“Someone suggested I do a single,” he said. “I did and enjoyed it. Last year I had my arm in plaster for four months and wasn’t available for any of the crew boats so I recovered from the injury and gave the single another go.”

It is a tribute to Purchase’s mental strength and powers of recovery that, as he nursed his arm injury, his career was in doubt. Yet that might have been the making of him, according to lightweight head coach, Robin Williams. “He worked really hard, got through it and came back stronger,” he said.

Establishing a competitive double, though, is not just a case of putting the two best lightweight scullers together and waiting for the spark. Before they became a pair, the individual pecking order had to be sorted out in the British trials.

Purchase won it, but only after a protracted battle with his new partner through the last 500m. In victory, Purchase had posted a time just two seconds slower than Alan Campbell, Britain’s best heavyweight sculler for a generation.

However, only one full season remains until Beijing for the debut double. “That means we have to be a lot more driven and focused towards our goals,” said Purchase. “In the single you can do your own thing, it doesn’t matter as long as you’re in harmony with the boat. Add someone else into the equation and they’ve got to be in time with the boat, so have you and you’ve both got to be in time with each other. The boat moves a lot faster, so you’ve got to do all the little things that bit quicker.

“We know we both can scull very well, we’ve now got a great chance to take on the world’s best. The problem is we’ve only got 15 months to do it.”