Men's Pair (M2-) - Final

When a crew comes back to an event, they always attract a lot of interest and this was certainly the case for Dorian Mortelette and Germain Chardin of France. Mortelette and Chardin won silver at the London Olympics and then took silver a year later at the World Rowing Championships. The duo then rowed in their country’s men’s eight in 2014 and now they are back in the pair. The long, fluid strokes took France into the lead and gave an indication of the boat that may be able to catch up with the Olympic and World Champions, Murray and Bond of New Zealand.

In the absence of Murray and Bond, France held on to this race over Hungary’s Adrian Juhasz and Bela Simon Jr. Then Belarus pushed ahead of Hungary putting this race into a sprint-to-the-line position. With France taking gold, Juhasz and Simon pulled out a huge sprint to take silver and Dzimitry Furman and Dzianis Suravets of Belarus had to settle for bronze.

Results: FRA, HUN, BLR1, CHI, ESP, BLR2

Gold – Dorian Mortelette – France

We changed the height of the pin from yesterday and we had more space to row with which was good. We will take away some good lessons for the Europeans in two weeks. But we’ll see how we compare to the ‘big ones’.

Silver – Bela Simon Jr – Hungary

Our only goal is to qualify for Rio in the pair. We were training like crazy, but we will taper a bit  before Europeans. We won’t be in Lucerne as we go to the Universiade.

Bronze – Dzianis Suravets – Belarus1

We had a really good start. But nothing left for the finish.

B-final

Croatia2 was the fastest of these boats following yesterday’s heats and by the middle of the race Marin Begovic and Ante Janjic had moved into the lead. Begovic and Janjic then really found their pace in the second half of the race and coming into the final sprint the Croatian’s had a good lead. Then China1 came sprinting through. Croatia had just enough water left to hold on to first place.

Results: CRO2, CHN1, CRO1, CZE, CHN2