A new rule in rowing eliminating restarts for broken gear did not take long to gain Peter Taylor's attention.

At a recent extraordinary congress for the sport's governing body, Fisa, in Copenhagen, the breakage rule that allows a boat to restart if it suffers a gear break within the first 100 metres of a race was scrapped.

That was of particular interest to Taylor, who won bronze at last year's London Olympics in the men's lightweight double sculls with Storm Uru, behind Denmark and Great Britain, at Eton Dorney. The GB duo of Mark Hunter and Zac Purchase broke a seat shortly after the start and the race was restarted, with the hosts going on to grab silver ahead of the Kiwis.

"I got told of that an hour after it got released," Taylor laughed.

"I got quite a few emails and messages saying ‘Hey Pete, did you see this, did you read this?' I definitely read it."

However, he said he had not dwelled on the incident, nor would he now that things had changed. "It's the rules. Those are the rules and they played to them and that's what happened," he said. "I can't look back at it and think, the silver medal, what could have been. It wasn't and I'm not too fussed."

But Taylor didn't think the old rule would have benefited them as much if they were in the same boat - so to speak.

"Well, to be honest, maybe not, because we check over our boats a lot better than they do."

Olympic gold medallist Mahe Drysdale was controversially awarded a restart in the semifinals of the 2010 world champs at Lake Karapiro when a hastily ill-placed sticker caused him problems soon after the start. Taylor said he was comfortable with the elimination of the rule, which came from an era when boats were made of wood and the outriggers were welded metal.

"What sport has second chances? It's not like if you kick the ball out on the full from a kick-off you get a second chance to kick it again.

"I just want to go out there and make the result a better one next time round."

- © Fairfax NZ News