Men's Double Sculls (M2x) -Final

All of the expectations were on the two-time World Champions, Martin and Valent Sinkovic of Croatia. These two athletes were formerly in the very successful Croatian men’s quad, but they have proved to be just as successful in the double. The Sinkovic brothers are used to leading from start to finish and they looked to be doing that again today as they took off into the lead. Behind them Poland was the closest. Poland is yet to qualify this boat for the Olympic Games and they may be preparing for the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta in May. Then Norway slotted into third. The Norwegian double included the two-time Olympic Champion from the men’s single, Olaf Tufte.

Poland’s Dawid Grabowski and Dominik Czaja continued to hold on to the Croatian leaders with Switzerland now pushing into third. But there was still 500m to row and the Sinkovic brothers now presented their superiority by pushing clean away from the field. Poland had a wonderful race and managed to hold on to silver with Switzerland taking bronze.

Results: CRO, SUI, POL, NOR, CUB, GBR

B-final

The top Italian boat had to pull out of this race as Francesco Fossi was not well. Instead it was Spain’s Joaquin Montero Gomez and Aleix Marti Roura that got away very quickly. By the middle of the race they were completely dominating the race. Argentina’s 2012 Olympic crew, sitting in second, had no answer.

Results: ESP, ARG, EST, ISR

Valent Sinkovic – CRO  – gold
“We’re favourites. There are a lot of new crews out there so we really had to race our best. The winter preparation has been plenty long enough so we are really happy to race again.”

Dominik Czaja – POL – silver
“The result comes as a surprise because we’ve only been rowing a short time together. But David (bow) did a great job. Now we would be happy to go to the qualification regatta to qualify for the Olmypics, but the internal selection is not final yet.”

Nico Stahlberg – SUI – bronze   
“In the beginning we were kind of forced to row together in the double because of injuries. But we really have fun to row together. It gives us a lot of confidence to row against big names like the Sinkovic brothers and Olaf Tufte.”