Stormy Canal Cup weekend

Most of the weekend’s activities, which included sprint racing and a concert by Hot Chocolate, had to be cancelled but luckily the weather calmed down enough on the main race day for the 12.7km eights race to take place.
Along with the reigning World Champion German eight, Canada (Olympic Champions and this year’s silver medallists), the United States and Great Britain all brought their men’s eights to race.

Organiser Florian Berndt said that countries sent their best available crews with Germany having only one person different from their World Champion crew and Canada only changing their coxswain. The United States and Great Britain both had different crews from their 2009 World Rowing Championship crews.
Germany finished first in a time of 38:20. This was 24 seconds ahead of Canada in second with the United States coming in third.

The weather prevented the usual large crowds which often number in the tens of thousands, but live television coverage still went ahead. “We have 13 cameras including two helicopters for the television coverage,” said Berndt. “It produced a great view of our sport.”

The crews also took part in an indoor rowing ergometer challenge. The challenge takes place on stage with eight rowing machines connected and crew members racing for a distance of 500m. The average wattage is calculated from the average 500m split times. The United States finished first with an average of 709.9 Watts. Germany was second (676 Watts) and Canada finished third (639.5 Watts).

The winning crew of the long distance, Canal Cup race is 10,000 Euros with second getting 5,000 and third winning 2,000 Euros.

The Canal Cup is raced annually with over 100,000 spectators regularly turning up to watch. It is raced on the Kiel Canal, one of the busiest artificial waterways in the world which joins the North and Baltic Seas.