Lightweight Men's Double Sculls (LM2x) - Final

France’s Jeremie Azou and Stany Delayre had the fastest time from yesterday’s semifinals and they showed their speed again today. Azou and Delayre raced together to fourth at the London Olympics and ever since then they have been working towards the next Olympic Games. Today they went one step closer to not only win but to set a new World Cup Best Time. Breaking an eight year old record, Azou and Delayre now own the time of 6:09.26.

Azou and Delayre overtook a fast starting British crew of Richard Chambers and William Fletcher to take the lead and never look back. Keeping a solid pace, Azou and Delayre held off an impressive closing sprint by Andrea Micheletti and Pietro Ruta of Italy. The British held on to take third.

Results: FRA, ITA, GBR1, USA, GER, AUT

Jeremie Azou (stroke) – FRA – gold

“I don’t know what time we did, but it was a really good race and with the conditions, but it should have been a good time. We were able to do what we needed to at training these last few weeks. Varese is a beautiful race course and I am happy the World Cup next year is also here. I think it is hard to have one race after the other, especially for recovery and weight but in Lucerne we still want to be able to have a good race for the spectators.”

Andrea Micheletti (bow) – ITA – silver

“We knew how good the French would be, but we wanted to be as close to them as possible. Now we have a little more time for preparation, we are going to try to keep getting closer to the French.”

Richard Chambers (bow) – GBR – bronze

“It was a really tough race, this is where we are now, this is where we stand. We will race in Lucerne and hope to make improvements. We come here for training camps so we know the course well, we like racing here.”

B-final

This turned into a very tight race between New Zealand’s new line up of Peter Taylor and Hayden Cohen and Japan 1 of Hideki Omoto and Hiroshi Nakano. Taylor, who won bronze in this boat class at the London Olympic Games, and Cohen hung on to a slight lead over the Japanese. But Japan remained unrelenting right through to the final sprint. New Zealand hit a stroke rate of 39 to Japan’s 38 to cross the line in first.

Results: NZL, JPN1, POL1, SUI1, POL2