Lightweight Women’s Quadruple Sculls (BW4x) – Final

Italy raced to the fastest time in the heats two days ago and today they met the Netherlands, the winners of the other heat, in this final. The remaining crews all got to today’s final via the repechage. Italy hold the under-23 reigning world champion status and they have retained Paola Piazzolla in the crew this year. The Dutch finished second in 2017. Italy jumped out at 58 strokes per minute and it served them well as they had the fastest pace at the start.

Italy got to the 500m mark in the lead with Japan, France and the Netherlands neck-and-neck. The United States also was on pace and only Germany seemed to be back a bit. These rowers all have to be at a specified weight making often for very even racing. The Netherlands now managed to get a slight edge over the chasing bunch and went after Italy who looked unstoppable. In the final sprint the pace of all boats seemed quite even with no change in the order over the final 500m.

Results: ITA, NED, FRA, GER, JPN, USA

Paola Piazzolla, Italy, gold
“The race was really difficult and it was really windy out there. The Netherlands are very strong and very fast. We’ve actually only been together in this crew for two weeks so we’re very pleased with the result.”

Martine Veldhuis (s), Netherlands, silver
“Very tough race as it was a little windy at the start. We had to wait a little bit up there and it was very hot. We are very happy with the silver, we obviously wanted to race for gold but after 300 meters the Italians were at least a boat length ahead.” 

Loanne Guivarc H, France, bronze
“We always expect to not have a great sprint at the finish so we made sure to have a really good start and then I think we all had the same feeling throughout the race, we were all so in sync. It was the best race that we have had so far. We weren’t really that far away from Italy and the Netherlands and we were just trying to keep it as close as we could.”