China tops medal table at World University Games regatta

Hosts China won four gold medals out of the 15 available at the FISU World University Games regatta held at Chengdu’s Sichuan Water Sports School at the start of August.

China picked up gold in the Men’s Four, Women’s Pair, Women’s Four and Women’s Eight at the regatta, which formed part of the biennial multisport event for university students. This edition of the games was postponed from 2021 due to Covid-19.

A total of 25 nations sent student-athletes to the regatta, with the largest entries coming in the Men’s and Women’s Single Sculls with 16 and 15 crews respectively.

Lithuania’s Povilas Stankunas – who has previously represented his country at world and European level – won the M1x after a blistering final 500m. Stankunas was the fifth-fastest qualifier for the final and was sixth to the first 500m mark as China’s Chen Weichun led out.

Bahman Nasiri of Azerbaijan took the lead in the third 500m, but Stankunas found the gears to pull back a six-second gap on Nasiri to win in 6:57.4, just over a second ahead of Chen with Nasiri in third.

Anna Santruckova of the Czech Republic backed up her sixth-place A-final finish at the 2023 World Rowing Under 23 Championships with victory in the W1x, beating Courtney Westley of South Africa and Sun Hongjing of China.

A total of 14 nations won at least one medal at the regatta. China added two silvers and four bronzes to their tally; Poland picked up three golds and two silvers; and Italy won two golds, three silvers and two bronze medals.

Poland’s collection included a win in the Mixed Quadruple Sculls as well as Lightweight Women’s Single Sculls and Men’s Double Sculls.

Italy came away as champions in both the men’s and women’s Lightweight Double Sculls events. The same four athletes – Sara Borghi, Ilaria Corazza, Giovanni Borgonovo and Matteo Tonelli – also won Mx4x silver behind Poland.

The closest finish of the regatta was in the Men’s Pair, which the Netherlands won by 0.81 seconds ahead of China. Pieter van Veen and Eli Brouwer worked their way up from third at the halfway mark to overtake Ni Xulin and Zhang Songhu with the fastest second 1,000m of the field.

Moldova’s Alexandr Bulat and Alexandru Masnic, who competed in this event at the 2023 European Rowing Championships, won bronze after holding off Türkiye’s Kaan Aydin and Aydin Sahin. The margin between third and fourth was only 0.07 seconds.

While many competitors at the regatta have previously competed at junior, under-23 or senior international events, for others the FISU regatta was a first appearance in a national vest. For example, M4- champions Zong Zhaoshan and Liu Jiangyu have never before raced for China, although their crewmates Song Chunxiao and Xiao Yang competed as China 2 in the M2- at World Rowing Cup II this year.

Rowing was one of 18 sports at the 31st World University Games, which attracted a total of 6,500 student athletes from 113 countries.

Click here for full results: https://results.2021chengdu.com/?lang=en#/report?discipline=ROW&event=