2016 World Rowing Cup II in Lucerne will highlight Olympic rivals

For immediate release
Lausanne, 18 May 2016

The 2016 World Rowing Cup heads to Lucerne, Switzerland for the second World Rowing Cup and entries have come in from 51 nations with more than 550 athletes ready to compete. This is an increase on the first World Rowing Cup as a number of nations from outside of Europe have chosen to compete at this regatta.

The lightweight women’s double sculls is looking to be one of the highlights of the three-day regatta. The World Champion New Zealanders Sophie MacKenzie and Julia Edward will race against a strong field that includes all of the nations that raced in the final at last year’s World Rowing Championships. This includes 2015 bronze medallists, Kirsten McCann and Ursula Grobler of South Africa. China’s Feihong Pan and Olympic medallist Wenyi Huang will be strong contenders.

The highly-anticipated men’s single sculls sees World Champion Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic meeting Olympic Champion Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand for the first time this season. Synek and Drysdale are also up against recently crowned European Champion Damir Martin of Croatia. The men’s single has attracted 30 entries.

Kim (Crow) Brennan of Australia returns to the international scene in the women’s single sculls. Brennan, the reigning World Champion, will meet Magdalena Lobnig of Austria who won at the European Rowing Championships earlier this month. Also racing is 2012 Olympic Champion Mirka Knapkova of the Czech Republic and winner of World Rowing Cup I Carling Zeeman of Canada.

The United States is sending the biggest team with 17 boats entered, followed by Germany with 16 boats and Great Britain with 15. There will be a large contingent of South American countries in attendance including Peru, Mexico, Brazil and Venezuela.

In 2015 the World Rowing Cup series was won by New Zealand with Germany and Great Britain in second and third respectively.

Racing begins on Friday 27 2016 at 9:00 CET with heats and progresses through repechages, semifinals and to the finals on Sunday 29 May. A-finals will start at 10:18 CET. There will be live video streaming of the A-finals on www.worldrowing.com.

Regatta information can be found here.
Entries here.
The World Rowing media guide will be online (from 20/05/16) in the media centre. 

The World Rowing Cup series was launched in 1997 and consists of a series of three events. The overall World Rowing Cup winners are determined after the third event. This year, the three stages of the series are Varese, ITA (15-17 April), Lucerne, SUI (27-29 May) and Poznan, POL (16-19 June).