Women's Pair (W2-) - Final

The first to show at the start were the World Rowing Cup winners from earlier this month, the Netherlands crew of Elisabeth Hogerwerf and Olivia van Rooijen. This was a gutsy move for the Dutch pair as they were up against the unbeaten combination of Heather Stanning and Helen Glover of Great Britain. The Stanning-Glover partnership are the reigning World and Olympic Champions and are the poster crew for the British talent identification programme for rowing. By the first 500m mark Glover and Stanning were in the lead and once there they proved to be in a class of their own.

With every stroke the British crew moved away from their competition leaving van Rooijen and Hogerwerf to contend with Cristina Grigoras and Laura Oprea of Romania. The Romanians have always maintained a strong women’s sweep programme, but in recent years they have seen other countries challenge their system and overtake it in many cases. Grigoras and Oprea managed to overtake the Dutch, but Hogerwerf and van Rooijen were not giving up. The Dutch duo fought back and moved to the finish line in the silver medal position. 

Out in front Stanning and Glover set a new European Best Time and by a huge five seconds. The duo went under seven minutes setting the standard at 6:58.28. The British women’s pair now has the World Best Time, European Best Time as well as the European, World and Olympic Champion titles.  Stanning and Glover are in the throws of rewriting the record books. 

Results: GBR, NED, ROU, FRA, DEN, POL

Heather Stanning (GBR) – Gold

It’s taken for granted that we win, which is quite sad. But we still have a lot to learn. There are some really good crews that came up, especially the Dutch and that is really exciting.

Elisabeth Hogerwerf (NED) – Silver

We had a really good start, we were in front the British. But we couldn’t hold the pace they had in the first thousand. Our goal was to stay with them. We didn’t manage, but trying to stay with them pulled us away from the other crews.

Cristina Grigoras (ROU) – Bronze

We are happy, but not very happy. We expected GBR to win because they are Olympic Champions. We have been together for 2 years and we continue to progress.

B-final

It was very tight at the start of this race and with half the race gone only two seconds separated the top five boats. The the Czech Republic got a slight margin and continued to push. Spain tried hard to follow suit with Ireland also very close. At the line the Czech’s had managed to hold on to finish seventh overall. 

Results: CZE, ESP, IRL, UKR, CRO, GER