Men’s Double Sculls (M2x) – Finals

A-final

This season has seen no real leader in this boat class and in the semifinals the finishing times were incredibly similar. France had the fastest time by a little bit. The first to show was Timo Piontek and Lars Hartig of Germany. But it was France’s Hugo Boucheron and Matthieu Androdias who got to the 500m mark in the lead. Boucheron and Androdias became European Champions last month when they beat Romania and Great Britain to the line. They were racing both of these boats today as well as the reigning World Champions, New Zealand.

The New Zealand crew of John Storey and Christopher Harris are yet to medal this season and would need a really good race today. They sat in fifth at the half way point just behind Germany and Great Britain. In the third 500 France continued to lead with the British moving up into second. It was so tight with just a second separating the British, Switzerland and New Zealand. France at 40 continued to lead with New Zealand at 42 and Switzerland at 41. France had become the new World Champions. Switzerland’s Barnabe Delarze and Roman Roeoesli took silver and Storey and Harris took bronze.

Results: FRA, SUI, NZL, GBR, GER, ROU

Matthieu Androdias (s), France, gold
“It was very difficult for us to balance the boat in these conditions so we had to be very concentrated in the race.”

Barnabe Delarze (b), Switzerland, silver
“It was a tight race with a lot of position changes. I kept yelling at Roman to push harder. We just needed to stay in the boat and not make mistakes. For next year we don’t know what will happen, we’ve changed the line-up for every regatta this season but this medal is a good stepping stone.”

Christopher Harris (s), New Zealand, bronze
“It was always going to be tough with the competition and the conditions. We stuck with our plan but perhaps we left too much to do at the end but we had faith in ourselves to come away with a medal. We’ll look to keep stepping it up from here.”

Re-watch the race here

B-final

The Netherlands got away quickly at the start with Poland in the lane next to them. Poland missed out on making the final through the semifinals by a fraction of a second and they must have been the favourites for this race. Poland’s Miroslaw Zietarski and Mateusz Biskup then pushed into the lead. But Amos Keijser and Nicolas van Sprang was holding on and did not let Poland get away. Both crews rated 39 at the end with the Dutch getting there first.

Results: NED, POL, IRL, NOR, EST, BUL