Women's Quadruple Sculls (W4x) - Final

Qualifying directly from the heats two days ago was Germany and Poland. Germany hold the World Best Time in this boat class and they are regular medallists. Today Germany got away quickly and went out to a small lead. But it was Poland that got to the first 500m mark first. The margin, however, was tiny as Poland and Germany moved together. Germany took silver at last year’s World Rowing Championships and they have their season goal set on the Rio Olympics.

Then going through the middle of the race Germany got into the lead and began to pull away from Poland. The German crew of Annekatrin Thiele, Carina Baer, Marie-Catherine Arnold and Lisa Schmidla were having a great race in these trying conditions and were pulling away from the rest of the field. Behind them a battle was now going on between Poland and the Olympic Champions, Ukraine. Germany crossed the line to a standing ovation as Poland held on to second with Ukraine just holding off the Netherlands.

Results: GER, POL, UKR, NED, GBR, RUS

B-final

France and Belarus have not yet qualified for the Rio Olympics. They may be using this race as a warm up for the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta as both boats gave it their best for the full 2000m. The lead swapped several times before France got the better run at the end.

Results: FRA, BLR

Carina Baer (2) – Germany- gold 
“It was a special race because it is more about rowing together and not making any mistakes today. We are very happy to win here.”

Maria Springwald (3) – Poland – silver  
“The race was very difficult because of the waves and the wind. Our opponents are very fast, a silver medal is very good for us.”

Olena Buryak (2) – Ukraine – bronze
“We are very happy that we could finish the race because of the conditions. The result is OK for us. We still need to qualify for Rio in Lucerne.”