Red Bull action collides with rowing

The ‘Red Bull Ready to Row’ used a relay race format with rowers swapping to different types of boats becoming part of the main action.

In true Red Bull style, a crowd of 20,000 spectators were treated to thrills and spills as teams of eight rowers jumped from boats to floating pontoons to other boats with 800m sprint races in between.

For the athletes involved the race consisted of four different boat types, the eight, coxed four, double sculls and single sculls with one rower from the team having to race in all four boats.

Athletes had to endure bumpy water with changeovers taking place on 8m by 2m floating pontoons in the middle of the Main River along the ‘Museum Embankment’. Transitions between boat types were suspenseful and action-packed as rowers brought their boat into one side of the pontoon with the required rowers then leaping out and racing to get into another boat on the opposite side of the pontoon as fast as possible.

The overall winning team was the composite crew, the Great Eight, captained by Germany’s top single sculler and former World Champion, Marcel Hacker. This boat included rowing greats from the single like Olympian Tim Maeyens (BEL), current World Champion in the single, Ondrej Syne

k (CZE), Sweden’s best single sculler Lassi Karonen, as well as German national team members Karsten Brodowski, Michael Biel, Martin Gulyas and Tobias Kuehne.

After his victory Hacker declared, “"This was the hardest race I've ever done in my career, but it was cool!” Hacker, as team captain, was the athlete chosen to do all four boats in the relay. The incentive to win was a cool 15,000 Euros in prize money.

Results

First:  Great Eight Marcel Hacker (captain), Karsten Brodowski, Michael Biel, Martin Gulyas, Lassi Karonen, Tobias Kuehne, Tim Maeyens, Ondrej Synek

Second: Seeclub Zurich
Erik Vils (captain), Pascal Flory, Charles d'Oncieu, Olivier Gremaud, Pierre Glauser, Adrian Koller, Simon Gawlik, Tim Vollrath

Third: Sports Aid
Felix Bach, Paul Henry, Kevin Rakicki, Hannes Ocik, Hubert Trzxeinsky, Alexander Egler, Jann-Edzard Junkhahn, Kay Rückrodt

Video coverage here.