Men’s Quadruple Sculls (M4x) – Finals

A-Final

In the heats two days ago Poland recorded the fastest time and come through to these finals as the favourites. This crew won at World Rowing Cup I last month but have made two changes to the crew for this regatta. The line-up of Baranski, Posnik, Chabel and Czaja were the first to show. Poland settled into a 35 stroke rate pace to take the lead over Germany and Great Britain.

Poland remained in the lead going through the middle of the race with Germany holding on to a firm second. This left a huge battle between Great Britain and New Zealand for third. Great Britain had taken bronze earlier this month at the European Championships while New Zealand are racing at their first international regatta this season. Poland went into the final sprint rating 38 with New Zealand going to 40, Australia at 46 and Germany hitting 39. Poland had won. The crowd waited for the remaining results. Australia took second and New Zealand took third at just 0.27 of a second behind Australia and just 0.02 of a second ahead of Germany.

Results: POL, AUS, NZL, GER, GBR, CHN

Szymon Posnik, Poland, gold
“We were calm and focused. We knew that was the key to winning. Racing in front of a home crowd was great and that much better.”

Caleb Antill (b), Australia, silver
“Considering the conditions we knew it was going to be a long race but we decided to keep to what we know and really get that speed in the middle thousand. We had a bit of a slip up in the last thousand but congrats to Poland, that was a great race.”

Nathan Flannery (b), New Zealand, bronze
“There are some pretty tough conditions out there! We planned to go out fast but it didn’t really happen but we managed to settle into a good rhythm in the middle. This is good considering we put the boat together only on Wednesday after an injury.”

Re-watch the race here

B-final

France had the best start. But it didn’t last long as the United States moved out in front and held that position through the middle of the race. Then Lithuania pulled out a big sprint to finish first.

Results: LTU, USA, FRA, HUN