Men’s Double Sculls (M2x) - Final

A–Final

The World Champions, New Zealand finished outside of the medals at World Rowing Cup II last month. It looks like they have picked up the pace at this regatta with John Storey and Chris Harris coming into this final having recorded the fastest qualifying time in yesterday’s semifinals. But winner of the other semifinal, Hugo Boucheron and Matthieu Androdias of France One was just 0.01 of a second slower. This would be a tight race.

Germany’s Timo Piontek and Lars Hartig had a very good start. Hartig, in stroke seat, is a former lightweight rower and knows how to rate high. The Netherlands One of Amos Keijser and Nicolas van Sprang followed in second. The margins remained tight coming into the middle of the race with Germany just in front but only two seconds separated the entire field. Now Storey and Harris were challenging the Germans for the lead. Hartig and Piontek were ready and reacted to the challenge. New Zealand was already at 40 strokes per minute with still 500m left to race. Germany held the challenge with a 36 stroke rate as the Kiwis went to 41. Poland was now closing and reeling in Germany. This was going to be a crazy sprint to the line.

Poland’s Miroslaw Zietarski and Mateusz Biskup had upped their stroke rate and taken the lead. After finishing eighth at World Rowing Cup II, Zietarski and Biskup had pulled off the upset of the day. Meanwhile home favourites, Nico Stahlberg and Roman Roeoesli of Switzerland, buoyed on by the crowd, had snuck through to bronze and deny the World Champions of a medal.

Results: POL, GER, SUI, NZL, FRA1, NED1

Re-watch the race here

B-final

China missed out on making the A-final by just 0.22 of a second. It may have used up all of their puff as today it was the Netherlands Two in the lead at the start. Then john Graves and Benjamin Davison of the United States. Once in front the US kept the pressure on and in the final sprint managed a 40 stroke rate pace to win the race.

Results: USA, NED2, ARG, CHN1, FRA2, CHN2