2018 European Championships entries announced for rowing

For immediate release
Lausanne, 25 July 2018

Rowing at the combined 2018 European Championships in Glasgow, Great Britain has attracted entries from 32 European nations with nearly 500 rowers competing for the title of European Champion.

This is the first time the multi-sport European Championships is taking place and rowing is one of seven sports that are participating between the host cities of Glasgow and Berlin. These sports will compete over a period of ten days from 2-12 August with rowing taking place at Strathclyde, just outside of Glasgow, from 2-5 August 2018.

The rowing programme includes 17 boat classes with the biggest entry coming in the men’s single sculls. Strong competition is expected between Olympic silver medallist Damir Martin of Croatia and Norway’s Olympic medallist Kjetil Borch with World Cup medallist Roman Roeoesli of Switzerland also competing. The women’s single sculls features the current World Champion Jeannine Gmelin of Switzerland up against Austria’s 2016 European Champion Magdalena Lobnig. Gmelin remains unbeaten so far this season.

Italy is sending the largest team with entries in 16 of the boat classes. The World and European Champion in the men’s pair Matteo Lodo will be racing with new partner Vincenzo Abbagnale. Italy has also entered the same men’s four line-up that are the reigning European Champions.

The Netherlands, Russia and Great Britain are all sending 14 crews and there will be high expectations for the Dutch lightweight women’s double of Ilse Paulis and Marieke Keijser. Paulis and Keijser won the 2018 World Rowing Cup series and they look to be the crew to beat. Host nation Great Britain’s hopes will be on their men’s quadruple sculls who come to Glasgow having won at the third World Rowing Cup in July. The men’s eight is also expecting good results with Olympic Champion Mohamed Sbihi sitting in the middle of the boat. They will face the World and European Champions Germany.

Racing begins on Thursday 2 August at 9:30 BST with heats that will then progress through repechages, semifinals and finals that will take place on Saturday 4 and Sunday 5 August 2018. All four days of heats, reps., semifinals and finals will be live-streamed on www.worldrowing.com. The finals will be broadcast live (in full or in part) on at least 24 European television channels plus Eurosport. This record amount and extent of coverage of the European Championships for rowing and it is testament to the aggregation effect this multi-sport championship event.

Entries and regatta information can be found here.

The World Rowing media guide will be online (from 27/7/18) here. 

Rowing has staged European Championships since 1893 and it is one of the longest running sport championships on the international calendar. After a hiatus it was reinstated in 2007 with 2018 being the first time it has been part of a multi-sport event. The European Rowing Championships is open to the 46 European national rowing federations, including Israel.