Men’s Double Sculls (BM2x) – Final

Lithuania’s Dovydas Nemeravicius and Armandas Kelmelis had set a new under-23 World Best Time earlier in the week. They also had the fastest qualifying time coming through from yesterday’s semifinals. Lithuania just beat France in this semifinal and at the start of this race France’s Bastien Quiqueret and Maxime Ducret had a whisker of a lead over the Netherlands. Coming through the middle of the race France still had the lead with the Dutch in second. Lithuania was now moving. Both Kelmelis and Nemeravicius raced at the Rio Olympics but in different boat classes. They have come together well.

Then Great Britain did a push and overtook Lithuania and moved them into second. But France was now looking rather comfortable at the head of the field. The British now came flying. Sebastian Devereux and Samuel Meijer had found another gear and taking their stroke rate to 44 they had caught the French.

Results: GBR, FRA, LTU, NED, BEL, CRO

Sebastian Devereux (b), Great Britain, gold
“We executed that race plan to the T. We always kept in our boat. We needed to work well together to walk past crews together. We trusted ourselves to the finish.”

Bastien Quiqueret (b), France, silver
“We had a very big start, a really good middle thousand and in the end we knew we had to go. It’s the championships and we just had to go. We are possibly going to the European under 23s but we’re not sure.”

Dovydas Nemeravicius (b), Lithuania, bronze
“The race was not like we expected it to be. We had lots of mistakes from our plan. But we are very happy with the result. The rest of our season will still be decided by the coaches.”

B-final

All eyes were on the German crew as they only just missed out on making the a-final following yesterday’s semifinal. Finger and Lotz of Germany were the fastest starters before Slovenia’s Krebs and Aljancic pushed into the lead. Once there Krebs and Aljancic managed to push away from the field leaving Germany to contend with New Zealand and Indonesia. In their purple boat Slovenia stayed ahead with a 33 stroke rate as a five-boat race went on for second. Germany got there first.

Results: SLO, GER, INA, ITA, BUL, NZL