Synek and Karsten top at Holland Beker

Drysdale, Synek & Yanakiev

Racing at Amsterdam’s Koninklijke-Holland Beker regatta over the weekend focused around the two big events, the Ladies’ Trophy for the women’s single and the 119-year old Holland Beker Cup for the men’s single.

The Czech Republic’s new top sculler, Ondrej Synek took away the 3,000 Euros in the Holland Beker by beating Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand who finished second and Bulgaria’s Ivo Yanakiev in third. Ekaterina Karsten (Belarus) made it her fifth win in the Ladies’ Trophy by overtaking Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic and New Zealand’s Georgina Evers-Swindell.

Until this year Synek was an unknown in the single. All of his international rowing had focused on the double. But he hit the ground running when he raced to gold at the Rowing World Cup in Eton last month and then maintained the momentum by taking bronze at Munich. Twenty-two year old Synek added Holland Beker to his list of achievements after leading from the start in the head wind conditions and battling closely with Olympic medallist Yanakiev for most of the race. As Yanakiev faded towards the end Drysdale poured on a late-in-the-race charge, but ran out of metres and finished second.

Karsten also took away 3,000 Euros for her 7 minutes 52 seconds of effort. Karsten made sure she was out of danger and in the money by establishing a slight lead at the start. After the race Karsten admitted she was surprised at Knapkova’s speed and thought that her main challenge would come from one of the Evers-Swindell twins that both raced Karsten at the second BearingPoint Rowing World Cup in Munich a week prior.

Ekaterina Karsten

With just 500 metres left to row Knapkova was only a second down on Karsten forcing Karsten to pull out her trademark final sprint to win.

In the men’s four the Netherlands national team boat won over Denmark and New Zealand in a close race. The Dutch four, made up of three from their silver medal winning Athens eight plus Geert Cirkel, are their country’s top men’s sweep boat this season. They overtook the fast starting New Zealanders and got just enough ahead to let the real race go on between Denmark and New Zealand. Denmark prevailed by just half a second at the line over New Zealand.

The Danes also featured in the lightweight men’s single with Mads Rasmussen finishing second behind Gerard van der Linden of the Netherlands. Van der Linden has moved from team boat rowing to the single for the first time this season and is improving with every race. The two raced each other at Eton where Rasmussen came out on top winning World Cup gold.

Denmark and New Zealand went head to head on day two in the women’s pair. At the finish less than a second separated the two boats with New Zealand’s Nicky Coles and Juliette Haigh in the lead. On day one though it was the Dutch boat of Helen Tanger and Annemiek de Haan who took line honours with New Zealand in second and Denmark in third.

Throughout the two days of racing times were slow as head wind conditions predominated.

For a full list of results please go to: www.hollandbeker.nl