Lightweight Men's Four (LM4-) - Final

The reigning World Champions, Switzerland, set the best qualifying time in yesterday’s semifinals and this will be their third race of the Varese World Rowing Cup. The Netherlands were the second fastest. All crews left the starting block together and they remained nearly in a line through the first 500m of the race. As they came into that 500m marker only two seconds separated all six boats.

Switzerland’s Tramer, Schuerch, Niepmann and Gyr continued to be in the lead and then they did a massive move going through the middle of the race and this turned out to be good enough to shake up the field. China followed in second with the United States holding on to third. Unlike many lightweight four races, the final 500m mark saw a relatively spread-out field.

The Swiss went on to score a clear win by a big three boat lengths. China remained in second with the United States earning bronze.

Results: SUI, CHN, USA, NED, GER, CZE

B-final

Both Poland One and Italy One only just missed out on the A-final from yesterday’s semifinals. Poland was just 0.08 of a second down on being third in the semi and Italy was just 0.28 out of contention. But it was Italy Two that had the best start and got to the half way point first. The rest of the field followed in a line with only two seconds separating all five boats. Italy Two continued to lead and even the closest challenger, Poland could not catch them. This will make for interesting boat selection in Italy.

Results: ITA2, POL1, POL2, ESP, JPN, ITA1

Mario Gyr – SUI – gold
“The Olympic Games are in four months but those months fly by before you know it. So we will need to pay attention to do as much productive work as we can. We believe in our own crew to have fun and not to pay too much attention to the other crews, that’s something we can build on.”

Chenggang Yu – CHN – silver
“We were pretty good but the Swiss were better this weekend. It’s a good challenge for us this season to beat them the next time we get to race them.”

Tyler Nase – USA – bronze
“We have just finalized our crew at the Olympic Trials back in Chula Vista, so this regatta was our first moment to compare ourselves with the competition. It’s been a trial and error process over the past few days but this was definitely the best race here in Italy so far.”