Crow beats Olympic Champion at Holland Beker

In the women’s single, the Ladies’ Trophy, Crow finished first in an impressive field that included many of the single scullers from the final at the London 2012 Olympic Games. Crow, who was third at the Olympics in the single, raced to the trophy title ahead of New Zealand’s Emma Twigg and Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus.

Twigg, who was fourth in the single at the London Olympics, arrived in Europe from her New Zealand training base in June and competed in the Samsung World Rowing Cup in Eton Dorney, Great Britain where she came first.

Half a second behind Twigg at the finish was 11-time Ladies’ Trophy winner, Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus. Karsten started off this season racing in the women’s double sculls and the 40-year-old, six-time Olympian, has stated that she has no intention of retiring just yet.
Behind Karsten, Olympic Champion Mirka Knapkov of the Czech Republic was fourth, one second down on Karsten. Then the impressive Eleanor Logan of the United States was fifth. Logan is a double Olympic Champion from the women’s eight but has changed to single sculling for the 2013 season and has already earned two World Cup medals in her new boat class.

The men’s single sculls event, the Holland Cup, was won by a Dutch rower for the first time in 18 years. Roel Braas of the Netherlands gave the home crowd a treat by coming through in first.

Braas has followed a similar route to Eleanor Logan in that he raced at the London Olympics in the men’s eight and started out this season racing the single. He has already earned a medal from the 2013 European Rowing Championships.

Behind Braas, Hannes Obreno of Belgium was second and Olympic Champion Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand was third.

Obreno is a newcomer to the Holland Beker and last year raced for his country at the World Rowing Under 23 Championships. Drysdale has taken time off since the Olympic Games completing a bucket list of events including an Ironman, New Zealand’s multisport event, the Coast to Coast amongst other things. Most recently Drysdale ascended Tanzania’s Mt Kilimanjaro, coming down almost directlyto the Holland Beker Regatta.

Despite not being ‘race-fit’ Drysdale led for most of the race only to give up the lead in the last 500m of the race. Behind Drysdale, in fourth, was Portugal’s best rower, lightweight Pedro Fraga.
Full results:  http://www.hollandbeker.nl