World Rowing Cup III crews ready for finals

For immediate release
Lucerne, 12 July 2014

After two days of intense racing the boats are set for the finals of World Rowing Cup III in Lucerne, Switzerland. Racing began with nearly 750 competitors from 44 countries and they have been narrowed down to the top boats for each of the 20 boat classes.

Intermittent rain did not prevent fair and tight racing over the two days of progression through heats and semifinals with dryer weather expected for the finals.

Highlighted finals include the women’s single sculls where World Champion, Kim Crow of Australia will meet winner of the first two World Cups, Emma Twigg of New Zealand. Both Crow and Twigg won their respective semifinals today and time differences indicate and extremely close final. The men’s single sculls will feature a clash between long-time competitors, World Champion, Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic and Olympic Champion, Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand. The final also sees the return to top competition of 2004 and 2008 Olympic Champion, Olaf Tufte of Norway.

World Champions in the men’s eight, Great Britain will come up against Olympic Champions Germany. Great Britain had to take the longer road to the final when they needed to go through a repechage in order to make the final. This longer road was necessary after an ever-improving Russian crew beat the British in the heats. Russia will be a crew to watch in the final.

Looking like they are back at the top of their game in the women’s double sculls, Lithuania’s World Champions, Donata Vistartaite and Milda Valciukaite will be up against World Cup leaders Sally Kehoe and Olympia Aldersey of Australia and European Champions, Poland’s Magdalena Fularczyk and Natalia Madaj. The men’s double sculls will see winners of the first World Rowing Cup, Lithuania (Saulius Ritter and Rolandas Mascinskas) race the winners of the second World Rowing Cup, Croatia (Martin and Valent Sinkovic). The result will be hard to gauge.

The New Zealand vs. Denmark rivalry continues in the lightweight men’s four. World Champions, Denmark raced winners of World Rowing Cup II, New Zealand in the semifinal today and the result favoured New Zealand. But Denmark is likely to come back stronger in the final making for an extremely exciting race for the medals. These two crews will also be up against winner of today’s other semifinal, Great Britain.

This World Rowing Cup is the third in the series of three World Rowing Cups for 2014. The first World Rowing Cup was staged in Sydney (AUS) in March with Australia topping the medals table at this regatta. The second World Rowing Cup then went to Aiguebelette (FRA) in June where Australia remained at the top of the medals table. Lucerne is the third and final World Rowing Cup for the season.

A-finals will start on Sunday, 13 July at 9:35 (CET). For live race tracking, race results, live blog and race reports go to www.worldrowing.com. Live video streaming of Olympic boat classes will start at 10:38 (CET).