Guiseley's Debbie Flood found that only a few weeks’ of training was not enough to put her back to the peak of her powers in the first Rowing World Cup of the season in Bled, Slovenia.

The 30-year-old, who has been working with Her Majesty’s Prison Service for a year, entered the women’s single scull in the mountain resort and was the early race leader in her heat.

However, the twice Olympic silver medallist paid the price for that initial pace and faded to finish fifth in 7min 59.97sec, which was nevertheless just ahead of Britain’s No 1 ranked single sculler at the meeting, medical student Melanie Wilson, who was timed at 8:00.60.

Ahead of them were Ekaterina Karsten-Khodotovitch (Belarus) in 7:45.96, Tang Bin (China) 7:50.43, Frida Svensson (Sweden) 7:51.58 and Agata Gramtyka (Poland) in 7:57.46.

That put both into the repechages but neither were able to take advantage of that second chance.

Wilson finished fourth in 8:11.48 and Flood fifth in 8:16.75, but for both it was their first single scull race since the Beijing Olympics.

The next World Cup event is at Munich in Germany on June 18-20 before a strong field assembles for the Henley Royal Regatta in early July, followed by the World Cup finals in Lucerne, Switzerland later that month.

After that, there will be a mid-season break before the rowers re-assemble for the World Championships in early November in New Zealand.

Overall, however, Slovenia was good for Great Britain, with nine gold medals, six silvers and a bronze.

Marcus Bateman and Bradford’s Matt Wells, nicknamed ‘The Red Express’ because of their hair colour, won the men’s double sculls ahead of compatriots Sam Townsend and Bill Lucas – an historic one-two for Great Britain.

Katherine Grainger and Anna Watkins won double gold an hour apart by taking the women’s double sculls and quadruple sculls, beating world champions the Ukraine in the latter.

Both British eights also took gold, the women just holding the Dutch off, while the men, who included Andy Hodge’s pairs partner Pete Reed, held off the Poles and the Dutch.