Racing is heading towards final days of the championships with finals in the adaptive rowing events commencing tomorrow, Thursday 4 October.
The new-look World Championship programme has spread finals races over four days, rather than the two that was the norm in the past. Adaptive rowers get the ball rolling on Thursday afternoon. The five adaptive events include the intellectually disabled mixed four which is only in its second year of appearance at the World Rowing Championships. This year three countries, Russia, Hong Kong China and Italy are competing.
The arms, shoulders men’s single sculls is turning into the premier adaptive event with Great Britain’s Tom Aggar continually upping the ante. Aggar beat his own World Best Time earlier this week and will be hard to beat in the final.
Finals will continue on Friday 5 November with seven events; lightweight men’s pair, lightweight men’s and women’s double sculls, men’s and women’s quadruple sculls and men’s and women’s four. Olympic Champions from Great B
ritain, Zac Purchase and Mark Hunter line up in the lightweight men’s double sculls against reigning World Champions, Storm Uru and Peter Taylor of New Zealand with China’s new combination of Fangbing Zhang and Tiexin Wang planning to break into that elite party.
Saturday’s finals are in the men’s and women’s single sculls, men’s and women’s pairs, lightweight men’s and women’s quadruple sculls, men’s coxed pair and the lightweight men’s four. Four-time consecutive World Champion, Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand is aiming for his fifth title on home waters but will come up against the Czech Republic’s Ondrej Synek who comes to Karapiro from an unbroken winning season. Karapiro will also get to see Belarus’s best, Ekaterina Karsten who is also going after her fifth consecutive World Champion title.
The 2010 World Rowing Championships concludes on Sunday 7 November and the finals include the lightweight men’s and women’s single sculls, men’s and women’s double sculls, lightweight men’s eight and the men’s and women’s eight. The blue riband event, the men’s eight has World Champions, Germany and Great Britain as favourites after winning their respective heats earlier in the week. For the women the reigning World Champions, the United States is looking outstanding with Canada the crew that everyone will be watching out for.
The International Rowing Federation, FISA, and the Karapiro organising committee are constantly monitoring changes in weather conditions and measures are in place to make changes to the racing programme to take into account inclement weather. All schedule changes will be announced on the
www.worldrowing.com Notice Board .
