Lightweight Men’s Pair (LM2-) – Final

Great Britain and France won their respective semifinals earlier in the week and they had been assigned the two favoured lanes today. Great Britain’s Sam Scrimgeour and Joel Cassells are the reigning World Champions, but it was France’s Augustin Mouterde and Alexis Guerinot who were the first to lead.

China then did a push that moved them up on the leaders. This push, however, did not last long and Denmark was now in third with Scrimgeour and Cassells managing to get just a fraction ahead of France. In the final sprint three boats were in a line together. All three crews were at 34. Who had to best closing sprint to win the gold? At 250m to go there remained nothing between these three boats. France went to 39 and then 40. Great Britain was now at 39. France had more speed. Mouterde and Guerinot had done it. They are the new World Champions. Emil Espensen and Jens Vilhelmsen of Denmark had become the silver medallists and Great Britain had won bronze.

Results: FRA, DEN, GBR, IRL, CHN, USA

B-final

Germany started out in the lead before the very smooth rowing of Masato Kobayashi and Kazuki Nara of Japan pushed ahead. Kobayshi and Nara were handling the head wind conditions with class and they remained in front through the middle of the race. Germany’s Sven Kessler and Julius Peschel had to now deal with Russia and Brazil. Japan crossed the line in first with a full on tussle for second going to Germany at the line.

Results: JPN, GER, BRA, RUS, ITA, ESP

Augustin Mouterde (b), Gold, France
“The conditions were very challenging for us today. It is our third medal already this year in this boat class, so we’re very happy to take the gold today.”

Jens Vilhelmsen (s), Silver, Denmark
“The middle thousand was our strongest part of the race, at 1400m we already started our final sprint to try to catch up with the French but we couldn’t really get the rating up. The French are just really hard to beat.”

Joel Cassells (b), Bronze, Great Britain
“We just stuck to our plan and rowed our race. There were a number of factors out of our control but we did our best and we just came up short.”