Under-23 Women’s Quadruple Sculls (BW4x) – Final

Germany won their heat a couple of days ago, Poland won theirs, but with a time a fraction slower than the Germans. Poland are the reigning under-23 World Champions and they have retained all four members of that winning boat. Poland got away the quickest with France holding on to the Polish lead. These two boats led the field into the middle of the race.

Then Germany showed their stamina and overtook France to go after Poland. The Germans were outrating the Poles forcing Poland to up their stroke rate. Meanwhile Italy was flying down the outside and challenging France. Poland’s Wieliczko, Lemanczyk, Michalkiewicz and Zillmann had held off Germany to retain their World Champion title. They had also scored a new under-23 World Best Time of 6:19.10. This was three seconds faster than the previous time set in 2012 by the Australians. Germany had scored silver and France had just held off the Italians to take bronze.

Results: POL, GER, FRA, ITA, ROU, AUS

Olga Michalkiewicz, Poland, Gold
“It was truly an amazing race for us. We are now two time gold medallists in this event and can’t believe we also set a world best time.”

Frauke Hundeling (b), Germany, Silver
“We raced against the Polish girls at Henley this year and they beat us there, so we knew they would be the better team here. We just had to catch the French, that was our goal. It was the best race of the season.”

Marie Jacquet, France, Bronze
“Everyone could win this race, so we just had to race for the Gold medal, that was our only option. We might have started a bit too fast, but we gave it our all.”