European University Champs full of international rowers

Over 80 universities hailing from 18 countries entered the championships. Germany sent the most teams from 18 different universities. Other large teams included Great Britain, with 11 universities represented, the Netherlands, with eight universities, and Hungary, with seven represented. France and Switzerland both had teams from six universities competing. Nearly 600 athletes were entered to race.

Racing took place in all 14 Olympic boat classes as well as six international boat classes. Germany was the most successful taking medals in 15 of the 20 boat classes.

Crew names included a number of experience international rowers. The local men’s pair, from Leibniz Universität Hannover, saw under-23 and junior World Champion Jann-Edzard Junkmann win bronze with crewmate Christopher Egler. The gold medal went to Universität Bochum (GER) with Johannes Weissenfeld, who just a few weeks ago had finished fifth in the men’s four at the World Rowing Championships and Bjoern Birkner who took silver at the World Rowing Cup in Lucerne this summer in the men’s coxed pair.

From Oxford Brookes University (GBR), Ben Reeves and Jamie Copus won gold in the lightweight men’s double sculls. Both athletes also medalled at the World Rowing Under-23 Championships this year. Great Britain also took gold in the lightweight women’s double sculls with Jess Elkington and Hannah Traylen from Exeter University.

Krystsina Staraselets and Alena Kryvasheyenka of the Belarusian State University of Physical Culture raced to gold in the women’s double sculls. Staraselets finished fifth at this year’s World Rowing Under 23 Championships, also in the double, while Kryvasheyenka has won several world under-23 medals in previous years.

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Newcastle University (GBR) won gold in the men’s four. Three of its members raced in an A-final at the 2015 World Rowing Under 23 Championships.

Moscow State University (RUS) took gold in the men’s quadruple sculls, while ETH Zürich (SUI) took gold in the women’s quadruple sculls.

Belarus’s Tatsiana Klimovich, from Francisk Skorina Gomel State University, took gold in the women’s single sculls. This year she also raced to a fifth-place finish in the women’s double sculls at the World Rowing Under 23 Championships.

In the women’s pair, the gold medal went to Anastasia Tikhanova and Elizaveta Tikhanova from Moscow State University (RUS). Anastasia was part of the women’s eight that finished fifth at this year’s World Rowing Championships.

Great Britain took gold in both the women’s and men’s eights, with the men representing Oxford Brookes University and the women representing Cambridge University. The men’s eight from ETH Zürich (SUI) that finished sixth, raced in the Parmigiani Filippi shell that was awarded to the rowing club of Franz Gravenhorst, winner of the 2014 Parmigiani Spirit Award.

The next European Universities Rowing Championships will take place in Subotica, Serbia, from 13 to 16 July 2017.

For full results, click here.