Men's Pair (M2-) - Final

Great Britain and the Netherlands had the best qualifying times coming through from yesterday’s semifinals and they sat in the centre lanes of the regatta course. Roel Braas and Mitchel Steenman of the Netherlands got away the quickest. Braas and Steenman finished fourth at last year’s World Rowing Championships and they have high expectations for this season. Then Great Britain’s Matthew Tarrant and Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell did a push that took them into the lead. Tarrant and Reilly-O’Donnell are not the top pair for Great Britain, but they showed the incredible depth of British sweep rowing.

The Dutch and British remained the leading boats with South Africa also very much on the pace. As the last 500m came into view Great Britain, the Netherlands and South Africa held the medal spots. The question now was what order would these crews finish in? Tarrant and Reilly-O’Donnell did it. The 2015 gold medallists from the men’s coxed pair won the straight pair.

Results: GBR, NED, RSA, ITA, RUS, ESP

B-final

Yesterday’s semifinals in this boat class were incredibly tight with Serbia missing out on the A-final by just 0.01 of a second and Argentina missing out by just 0.37 of a second. Today Serbia’s Milos Vasic and Nenad Bedik made the best of it and went out to a big lead. Vasic and Bedik are the reigning world bronze medallists and they must have wanted to prove what they could do. Serbia crossed the finish line with a clear water lead.

Results: SRB, RUS, GBR, ARG, CHI, POL

Matthew Tarrant – GBR – gold
“We only had two weeks to prepare after our trials. For each race of the weekend we tried just to do our best race. We went into the final to establish ourselves in the pack and then take the lead after the thousand.”

Roel Braas – NED – silver
“We had a great regatta after our training camp. We haven’t had a lot of race practice yet. We come out of this regatta with a couple points to improve, so we are focusing now on more technical training, but we have pretty decent speed already.”

Shaun Keeling – RSA – bronze
“We wanted gold, but we are still happy to get a medal. It was a good chance to compare where we are at this point in the season. We head home now to do altitude training to get ready for the Olympics where we want to win gold.”