Men's Four Final

Through the heats and semifinals Great Britain had looked in a class of their own, racing at the head of the field. Great Britain men’s sweep rowing focused on the men’s eight last year, but this year they are back to making the four their flagship crew, and they have done it using two members of the 2012 Olympic Champion four, Triggs Hodge and Gregory, plus two new members, Nash and Sbihi.

Today, stroked by Andrew Triggs Hodge, Great Britain took off at the head of the field with a strong start that had them moving to nearly a boat length lead with just 500m rowed. The World Champion Dutch crew came through in second.  By the half way point Great Britain had shaken off the Dutch and moved out to an open water lead. Italy tried to come up, but did not have the same juice in the tank.

Then, coming through the third 500m, Greece began to move. The Greek crew is made up of three rowers who finished fourth in the 2012 Olympic men’s four final. They took a year off but are now back together and through the heats and semifinals they had already proved to have a huge sprint. And sprinting they were.

Great Britain now had a huge lead with Greece racing to stay ahead of Italy. This is the order they finished in with the impressive British four registering a new European Best Time by clocking a time of 5:46.86.

Results: GBR, GRE, ITA, NED, GER, RUS

Gold – Andrew Triggs Hodge – GBR

The team is really strong, we’ve been working really hard to achieve our results. At this time of year we’re still building. It’s great to have been here in Belgrade, it’s a beautiful place.

Silver  – Georgios Tziallas – GRE

We are not very happy, we really wanted to win today. It was not a good day on the water, we had a lot of problems with the wind and we hit a buoy.

Bronze – Cesare Gabbia – ITA

I was dying in that race, it was so hard. We just pushed as hard as we could.