Australia has won its first men’s eight rowing gold medal in more than 36 years, upsetting Great Britain at the third and final World Cup round.

The Australian crew clocked five minutes 23.92 seconds to beat the British favourites by 0.61 of a second at Lucerne, Switzerland.

Patrick Holt, Josh Hicks, Benjamin Canham, Timothy Masters, James Daniel Robertson, Joseph O’Brien, Angus Widdicombe and cox Kendall Brodie won Australia’s first gold in the event since 1986, when the team featured future Oarsome Foursome stars Andrew Cooper, Mike McKay and James Tomkins.

“It feels pretty good. We knew we had a quick last 500, we wanted to be in a good position at that part of the race,” Holt said.

“It’s going so fast, but it’s pretty good. We knew we had patches of speed here and there, now we need to go back to training.”

Also at Lucerne, Australians Jess Morrison and Annabelle McIntyre continued their strong form ahead of the world rowing championships, winning the pair event.

After taking gold in the women’s four at the Tokyo Olympics, Morrison and McIntyre have switched to pairs with outstanding effect ahead of next year’s Paris Games.

The Australians executed their race plan to perfection in the final, passing the Romanian crew with five seconds remaining.

Morrison and McIntyre were also unbeaten at last month’s second World Cup round and the Holland Beker regatta in The Netherlands.

“We knew that because it was a final, everyone was going to come out really hard and try to go with us,” McIntyre said.

“We stayed internal, focused on our race. If they were going to go with us, we were going to make them hurt for it. That was the plan.”

While the men’s eight squad will stay in Europe, Morrison and McIntyre will return to Australia and prepare for the September 3-10 worlds in Serbia, which will double as Paris Games qualifiers.

“We’ve learned something from every race and continue to hold ourselves to a high standard and keep looking to find more. I’m looking forward to continuing that when we get home,” Morrison said.

The women’s four won silver at Lucerne, while Tara Rigney was second in the women’s single sculls final.

Australia took bronze in the women’s eight and finished second overall in the World Cup standings behind Britain.

–AAP