World Rowing Cup opens the 2018 season in Belgrade

For immediate release
Lausanne, 23 May 2018

The World Rowing 2018 season is about to start with the first World Rowing Cup taking place next week in Belgrade, Serbia.  

The regatta has attracted athletes from 42 countries and the events being raced include the 14 Olympic boat classes, three international boat classes and four para-rowing boat classes.

The men’s single sculls is well represented with 37 entries. Leading the way in this race is likely to be multiple Olympic medallist Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic. Synek is the reigning World Champion and he will face regular medallist Angel Fournier Rodriguez of Cuba.

Among the women single scullers, the 2017 World Champion, Jeannine Gmelin of Switzerland is back for another season. She will be the hot favourite with challenges likely to come from Annekatrin Thiele of Germany and Austria’s Magdalena Lobnig.

After taking a year’s break from rowing Olympic Champion Ilse Paulis of the Netherlands returns in the lightweight women’s double sculls. Paulis is teamed up with Marieke Keijser, silver medallist at the 2017 World Rowing Championships and twice under-23 World Champion in the lightweight women’s single sculls. They will face strong crews from Poland and the United States.

The biggest team is the Netherlands with 22 crews competing. This includes two para-rowing crews and four crews entered in the men’s four. Winners of the 2017 World Cup series, Great Britain has entered 21 crews and both Germany and China have 20 crews coming to Belgrade. This large Chinese turnout includes three entries in the women’s pair and three also in the lightweight women’s single sculls.

Racing begins on Friday 1 June 2018 at 9:00 CET with heats for the para-rowing boat classes followed by International and Olympic boat classes. Racing then progresses through repechages and semifinals to the finals which will be raced over two days – Saturday 2 June in the afternoon and Sunday 3 June in the morning finishing at 2pm CET.

There will be live video streaming of the A-finals on www.worldrowing.com.

Regatta information can be found here. 

The World Rowing media guide will be online (from 25/05/18) here. 

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 Belgrade, SRB (1-3 June), Linz-Ottensheim, AUT (21-24 June) and Lucerne, SUI (13-15 July).