Under-23 Women’s Double Sculls (BW2x) – Final

Great Britain and Belarus won their respective semifinals earlier in the week. This earned Belarus’s Tatsiana Klimovich and Krystina Staraselets the favourable lane one with the British sitting next to them. Klimovich and Staraselets finished eighth in the quad last year. Romania pushed away the fastest and settled at a 35 stroke rate through the first 500m mark. But the lower-rating Great Britain (Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne and Jess Leyden) were able to push past Romania and into the lead by the middle of the race.

Romania then began to suffer and Belarus now came through into the silver medal spot and they tried to close on Great Britain. Hodgkins-Byrne and Leyden then went from 31 to a 33 stroke rate as they headed into the final sprint. Belarus followed in second with Romania trying to hold on to third. Looking rather relaxed, the British had taken gold. Belarus earn silver, and the Reigning under-23 World Champions, Romania had to settle for bronze.

Results: GBR, BLR, ROU, USA, GER, DEN

Jess Leyden (s), Gold, Great Britain
“We had a great rhythm and we just stuck to our plan. We focused on what was going on in the boat and completely trusted eachother. I love this girl [Jess Leyden] so much!”

Tatsiana Klimovich (b), Krystina Staraselets (s), Silver, Belarus
“The water here in Rotterdam was a little heavier then we are used to back home. But regardless of that it was a good race. We studied our competition very well for this race.”

Viviana Bejinariu (b), Ioana Vrinceanu (s), Bronze, Romania
“It was a very hard race, but we have been together for 5 years. We have a big sprint and knew that we had control of bronze when we started to sprint at 250m.”