Duisburg prepares rowers for second Rowing World Cup

	The Wedau regatta this year fits snugly between the first Rowing World Cup (two weeks ago in Munich) and the second Rowing World Cup that begins next week in Lucerne, Switzerland.
The very happy Chinese men's eight

Attracting 1200 rowers from 18 nations, the Wedau Regatta included the Chinese national team that have stayed in Europe for the month of May continuing their build-up towards the Beijing Olympics and making the most of the international racing opportunities.

Raced over three days, the Wedau Regatta had a day of preliminary rounds followed by two days of finals with a total of 200 races.

Highlighting the intensity of racing was the men’s eight. At the Munich World Cup China had pushed Germany out of the medals by finishing third with Germany in fourth. Following this defeat German national coach Dieter Grahn changed three positions in the crew and in the first final against China the Germans won, but by a very thin margin of less than half a second.

In the second final Germany was not so lucky and finished three seconds behind the Chinese.

In the men’s single Germany’s Marcel Hacker had reasonably easy races both days with Hacker commenting afterwards that these races gave him the opportunity to work on tactical racing strategies. The women’s single also had a clear winner. Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus, the current World Champion, made easy work of the finals on both days.

The team from Ireland included their new men’s pair line-up of Sean Casey and former British national team rower, Jonno Devlin. Casey and Devlin won the pair one day and came in a close second the other. Medals also came Ireland’s way in the very competitive men’s four.

Official website: http://www.rudern1.de/wedau/index_engl.php