Fair weather for Nottingham's Final Repechages

The skies opened and rain lashed down during the lunch break on Friday at the World University Championships in Nottingham, after which the sun decided to come out and smile on near-perfect racing conditions all afternoon.

Profiting from the change were the second set of repechage crews, including the men's coxless fours. At first it seemed as if Italy were going to claim the second qualifying spot after New Zealand, but Switzerland steadily eroded their two-second advantage, and by halfway just 0.16 seconds separated the two crews. To cries of "Haupt Suisse" Switzerland's under-23 crew burst through, leaving Italy trailing and clearly having trouble with steering.

Yesterday Australia's men's eight ran into steering problems, as well as a busted cox box which made communication rather difficult during their heat. Today should have been the opportunity to put it all right, but with two through from five, they floundered well behind Poland and the Netherlands, with Croatia also faster. The other repechage was won in style by Great Britain from Italy and France, but Canada and Germany, automatic finalists from the heats, look very difficult to beat.

The men's lightweight single sculls were also competitively raced, a photofinish being required to confirm Austria's Under-23 silver medallist Bernd Feuerstein through by 0.4 seconds over Gyorgy Vamos of Hungary and well behind Dutchman Roy Delis.

And so the FISU flag came down on another peaceful evening, and the last few crews took to the water for their last practice outings before the B finals begin at 10 am tomorrow morning.

For those trying to predict medals, a word of warning. The times at the course have not necessarily been guaranteed, although within each race you can generally trust the margins between crews and most of the splits are correct. Between races, however, you cannot be certain of making a fair comparison.

Report contributed by and copyright to the Rowing Service.