Rain no hinderance to Schiavone in Italian Challenge

The Italian Sculling Challenge is solely for single scullers. Competitors begin with a mass start for the 6000m race which includes a turnaround point around a buoy. Schiavone beat 2009 and 2010 consecutive winner, Sophie Hosking of Great Britain, who came in second woman. Third place, for the second year in a row, went to Italy’s Valentina Calabrese. Calabrese is the daughter of Giovanni Calabrese, Olympic bronze medal winner from the Sydney 2000 Olympics. Valentina has already made her mark in rowing, racing for Italy in 2010 as part of the under-23 team.

Schiavone’s winning time was 27:56 and that put her in 23rd place overall, about two and a half minutes behind the overall winner, Elia Luini.

Italian Olympic medallist Luini finished in a time of 25:07 to become the overall winner. He did this by beating Federico Gattinoni (ITA), who finished second, and last year’s winner, Iztok Cop of Slovenia. Gattinoni, has medalled in five of the six editions of the race and he put up a huge fight against Luini, challenging the leader for the entire race. Germany’s Jonathan Koch came in fourth and was one of eight scullers to finish the Challenge in under 26 minutes.

This is the third win for Luini. “I come every year to Lake Orta,” said Luini after the race. “The organisation is really fantastic and it’s quite important for me to have a test at the end of the winter against other strong rowers”.

The Italian Sculling Challenge, also known as the Memorial Don Angelo Villa, is organised by multiple World Champion Stefano Basalini and came about to remind the Italian priest to remember rowers. Raced on Lake Orta, north of Milan, this year’s edition endured rainy, cold conditions with temperatures barely reaching 5° Celsius.

The Challenge also included an indoor rowing competition on the day before the race. The indoor rowing race was conducted as a relay with four middle-school aged rowers, a disabled athlete and a rowing champion on each team. This year the team Casale Corte Cerro, which included top Slovenian rower Bine Pislar, finished first. Second was Verbania which had Olympic medallist from Greece Vasileios Polymeros helping the team. Orta San Giulio finished third and featured Sophie Hosking.