New stars born at 2015 World Rowing Under 23 Championships

For immediate release
Plovdiv, 26 July 2015

The 2015 World Rowing Under 23 Championships in Plovdiv, Bulgaria completed five days of racing with medals being spread over 24 nations following the finals in 21 boat classes.

Italy proved their under-23 strength by winning four gold medals plus a silver and a bronze to finish at the top of the overall medals table. This strength was dominated by their lightweight rowers with gold medals in the lightweight men’s pair, lightweight women’s quadruple sculls and lightweight men’s four. Italy also won gold in the men’s coxed four when they raced a very tight race against New Zealand, with the win being achieved by just 0.21 of a second. In this same race Germany and Turkey fought it out for the bronze medal, Germany getting the medal by less than half a second.

Germany was very close behind Italy on the medals table with three gold medals. Both the men’s double sculls and lightweight men’s double sculls took gold along with a win in the blue riband event, the men’s eight. The German eight last won in 2010 and there was no hiding the team’s excitement to bring the boat back to the gold medal position. The United States finished second and Russia was third.

The United States and Romania won three gold medals each and finished third and fourth respectively on the overall medals table. The United States made a clean sweep of the women’s sweep rowing boat classes by winning the pair, four and eight. This included successfully defending their Under-23 Champion status in the women’s eight and four. The women’s pair of Jessica Eiffert and Georgia Ratcliff won ahead of Great Britain by a large seven-second margin. Eiffert returned to this boat class after finishing with silver in 2014.

For Romania the gold medal success was in the men’s four, men’s pair and women’s double sculls.

The most impressive result overall was in the lightweight women’s double sculls final when Zoe McBride and Jackie Kiddle of New Zealand set the only under-23 World Best Time of the regatta. McBride and Kiddle knocked five seconds off the former time. The duo had a clear water win over China in second and Switzerland in third. This gives McBride her second World Best Time of the season after she broke the time in the senior lightweight women’s single sculls during the World Rowing Cup series.

The men’s single sculls was won by Pilip Pavukou of Belarus who went from the back of the field to first in the final sprint. This pushed Serbia’s Andrija Sljukic and Natan Wegrzycki-Szymczyk of Poland into second and third respectively. The women’s single sculls final was raced very differently with Ieva Adomaviciute of Lithuania leading from start to finish, followed by Lovisa Claesson of Sweden and Pascale Walker of Switzerland who held second and third respectively for the entire race.

The next World Rowing event will be the World Rowing Junior Championships to be held in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil starting on 5 August 2015. This event will also double as the test event for the Rio 2016 Olympic Games.

Next year’s World Rowing Under 23 Championships will be held in Rotterdam, the Netherlands starting 20 August 2016.

To relive the World Rowing Under 23 Championships action visit www.worldrowing.com for full results, race reports and photos.