Ben Taylor and Oli Welch are backing away from comparisons with legendary New Zealand duo Hamish Bond and Eric Murray after powering to men’s pair gold at the world championships in Amsterdam.

Taylor and Welch defended their title with ease, dominating from the starting gun to win in 6min 16.62sec, nearly 2sec clear of Australia’s Angus Dawson and Alexander Hill, with the Italian crew third.

As they did last year in Shanghai, and throughout this week’s regatta on The Bosbaan lake, the Kiwi pair claimed an early lead and were never challenged.

Taylor and Welch were about one second faster than their Australian rivals through each of the first three quarters before the gap closed slightly over the final 500m.

It was reminiscent of double Olympic champions Bond and Murray in their pomp, who dominated races with apparent ease throughout an exceptional reign in the early 2010s, featuring six world titles.

Welch had mixed feelings about being compared to the crew who developed the household name, the ‘Kiwi Pair’.

“There’s a lot of talk around that. It’s pretty awesome to be in the same conversation as them,” he said.

“But we kind of do our own thing. We don’t feel like we need to live up that, we just do the best we can and see how it goes.”

Taylor said becoming back-to-back world champions felt “pretty awesome”.

“I guess it was the goal at the start of the season, and I feel that we stayed in that direction the whole way, but there’s always one last race that can knock you over.

“We were pretty confident during the week that we could do it. But you never know on the day, so we’re pretty stoked to get it done.”

Taylor said the pair would enjoy a small celebration before preparing to play their part in the New Zealand eights campaign.

World Rowing is allowing athletes to “double up” in crews in Amsterdam, which has allowed New Zealand to form men’s and women’s eights over the closing days of the regatta.

In earlier races over night, the women’s pair of Juliette Lequeux and Katie Lush placed third in their B-final while the men’s double of Ben Mason and Finn Hamill were fourth in their B-final.

The men’s four of Matt Macdonald, Oliver Maclean, Fred Vavasour and Harry Fitzpatrick have qualified fifth fastest for tomorrow’s A-final.