OLYMPIC winners Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter relived their glorious gold from Beijing by winning another international gold at the World Cup in Munich on Sunday.

Wycombe’s Hunter and Purchase, who races out of the Marlow Rowing Club, had not been in a boat together since taking their Olympic title two years ago, but they proved that old habits die hard as they beat world champions New Zealand back into second place.

After winning their heats and semi-final, they finished the lightweight double sculls in 6:26.56, less than a second ahead of the Kiwis after the two boats had raced neck and neck for the first 1,000m.

Hunter, who missed the first World Cup last month because of a back injury, said: “Where did that come from? It’s exciting. It’s even a shock. “We had to dig deep to find that. Three weeks ago I was injured and training on a bicycle. I can’t believe it.”

Purchase said: “It was a very hard race. I quite like being ahead for all of the race normally but you have to do what you have to do. “We have had some very good training together and this will help us gain in confidence. But every Olympiad gets harder but we must make sure that we progress.”

Also taking gold was Katherine Grainger, who teamed up with Anna Watkins to win the double sculls.

Grainger said: “We felt we were in control and did what we had to do. Anna was brilliant in the bow seat making all the calls so that we didn’t do more than we should have.”

Just over an hour later they joined Annie Vernon and Beth Rodford in the quads but couldn’t repeat their golden double of Bled as they were pipped to the post by Germany.

There was also disappointment for Greg Searle in the men’s eights, as they failed to repeat their gold from Bled and had to settle for bronze.

Searle, Marlow’s Olympic winner from 1992 who has come out of retirement ahead of London 2012, said: “It was disappointing that we weren’t quicker but our regular boat speed was just too slow. When we tried to push on it just didn’t happen. I’m happy to get a medal but we’ve got a lot of work to do.”