2008 Rowing World Cup concludes next week in Poznan, Poland

A total of 47 nations have entered crews for this third and final stage of the 2008 Rowing World Cup from 20 to 22 June 2008. The event will follow on directly from the Final Olympic Qualification Regatta which will be held at the same venue from 15 to 18 June.

Differing approaches to Olympic preparation is evident by the entries at the Poznan Rowing World Cup. Some coaches have chosen this regatta as an important lead up to Beijing while others believe it is better to focus on training rather than racing. There is still much quality across the board and athletes will only be going faster than at the Lucerne Rowing World Cup.

There will be 13 of the 14 Olympic boat classes raced at this event, with a few potential showdowns in the offing. Mahe Drysdale will take on Lucerne winner Ondrej Synek in the Men's Single, and the Men's Coxless Four promises to deliver nail biting racing as the 2007 World Champions New Zealand will be set on improving on their Lucerne 6th place. New Zealand surprised at Lucerne by winning the men's double. Rob Waddell and Nathan Cohen will not be able to use that surprise element again. They will now be the target to beat especially by France and Slovenia.

After a complete restructure of the German men's eight, all eyes will be on how the new line up performs against the ever improving Great Britain eight. The women's pair will give an indication of how two-time Olympic Champions, Romania are doing after returning to international rowing in 2007.

This regatta will be the chance for Great Britain to try to re-gain their leading position which they had after Munich, and Germany the chance to try to get ahead of Great Britain to re-gain their long-standing World Cup winner status as the Chinese team has returned home having made a big impact on the world of rowing in Lucerne.

This Rowing World Cup series has particularly high stakes for crews heading into the Olympic Games as results from these three regattas, along with last year's World Rowing Championship rankings, will be taken into consideration by FISA's seeding committee when placing boats in heats for the Olympic Regatta.

For the full list of entries, by event and by nation, please visit our website www.worldrowing.com or click here. The website will also provide an event by event preview, race reports and photo galleries during and after the regatta.

The Rowing World Cup series will be televised and streamed live through World Rowing's partner website www.wcsn.com. This service can be accessed through www.worldrowing.com. As usual, the live race viewer and live audio streaming of the race commentary will be available throughout the whole regatta.

The Rowing World Cup series was launched in 1997 and includes all 14 Olympic boat classes. The overall Rowing World Cup champions are determined after a series of three regattas. Germany has dominated the series since its beginning ten years ago. This year, the first two stages of the series were held in Munich (GER) and Lucerne (SUI).
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