Men’s Pair (M2-) – Final

At World Rowing Cup III in July gold and silver went to New Zealand and Croatia respectively. This is the first time they have raced each other since. Both won their heats earlier in the week with Croatia’s Martin and Valent Sinkovic winning their semifinal while James Hunter and Thomas Murray of New Zealand came second to Italy in their semifinal. Today the Olympic Champions from the men’s double, the Sinkovics were the first to show with Murray and Hunter in second. Hunter comes from the Olympic lightweight four while Murray rowed in the eight. A big second 500 push by New Zealand saw Murray and Hunter get their nose in front of the Sinkovic brothers with Italy very much on the pace in third.

Then Croatia pushed back and the push was devastating. The Sinkovics took a boat length lead. Coming into the final sprint the Croatians were in the lead and at 43. The Italian crew of Matteo Lodo and Giuseppe Vicino were flying. They were at 46 and had overtaken New Zealand. The saying goes, ‘you only need to be in front at the finish’. Today that is what Italy did. In the last stroke Lodo and Vicino became World Champions. Their win was just 0.34 of a second over Croatia and less than eight seconds outside of the World Best Time.

Results: ITA, CRO, NZL, FRA, GBR, SRB

Giuseppe Vicino (s), Italy, gold
“We did the race as planned. The most important thing for us was to stay in touch in the first 500m. We’ve done a lot of training on our final 500m, because we knew that would be the toughest part with the Croatians.”

Valent Sinkovic (s), Croatia, silver
“Congratulations to Italy, they were too fast in the last 500m. I think we can do more in the future, we didn’t have the kilometres in the pair just yet.”

James Hunter (s), New Zealand, bronze
“We just didn’t have the extra gear to hold off the Italians at the end. It’s a full field of really good crews, I think we gave it our best crack.”

B-final

The Czech Republic boat of Jakub Podrazil and Lukas Helesic used the approach of getting out fast and holding on. This worked through to the middle of the race. But then Romania started to work their way through to the head of the field. With the young Cosmin Pascari in stroke seat, Romania got into the lead coming into the final 500 and remained there until the end.

Results: ROU, CZE, ESP, BLR, USA, TUR