Men's Quadruple Sculls (M4x) - Final

In the heats two days ago times were very close between Great Britain and Germany 1 with the repechages indicating there were crews that could challenge these two countries. And the challenge came. At the start Canada’s new 2015 line up of Gibson, Dean, Bahain and Buie had the lead. They maintained this into the middle of the race with Germany and Great Britain within a second of the Canadian lead.

Then the British did a move that pushed Canada into second. Germany was also moving to make it a tight three boat fight for the gold. At the line the superior sprint by Great Britain had earned them gold.

Results: GBR, GER, CAN, POL, AUS, SUI

Graeme Thomas (3) – GBR – gold

“We followed our race plan and it was good because some of the team members were able to yell to keep us on race plan, me I couldn’t speak. Next week we have a recovery week then we have Henley, Lucerene and then some really big training sessions to prepare for Aiguebelette.”

Sam Townsend (2) – GBR – gold

“We live to cross the finish line first and I enjoyed it to the extent I can. We mad e push at 750m to go and the boat reacted well. There were 6 crews we haven’t raced with and with UKR and RUS missing we wanted to make sure to win this one.”

Karl Schulze (bow) – GER – silver

“It feels great to medal. At the European Championships it didn’t go so well with some sicknesses, since then we also have had some changes. The British had a good end of the race. We have a good feeling in the boat and we are improving from training to training.”

Julien Bahain (2) – CAN – bronze

“It’s our third race together, we still have a lot of things to figure out. We are strong so we can push really hard, but when we get tired it falls apart. We did a big push in the second middle of the race to keep the British next to us. It was neck and neck.”

B-final

The Italian crowd were relishing this B-final as the local crew of Venier, Rambaldi, Paonessa and Perino pushed through to take the lead over Germany 2. Once in the lead, Italy held it together and also held an impressive 37 stroke rate through the body of the race. At the end they lifted it to 40 to finish first.

Results: ITA, CHN, NZL, NOR, GER2, USA