Romania reign supreme at the 2023 European Rowing Under 23 Championships

The seventh European Rowing Under 23 Championships, held this weekend in Krefeld, Germany featured entries from 27 European delegations, including World Under 23 and World Under 19 Champions from earlier this year.

Romania finished at the top of the medal table for the third year in a row with an impressive total of eight gold and one silver medals. Host nation Germany had four gold medals, while a total of eighteen participating nations took home medals.

The Romanian rowers started their medal haul with three consecutive gold medals, in the women’s and men’s coxed four, followed by a convincing victory in the women’s pair. The Romanian national anthem would be heard five more times with dominant performances in both the men’s and the women’s eights, the men’s pair and the men’s four, for a clean sweep of men’s sweep events. In what was the closest race of the day, and with a typical Romanian sprint to the line, the women’s double of Ilulia-Liliana Balauca and Alexandra Ungureanu just pipped Switzerland over the line to grab another gold medal for their country.

It was a notable spread of European U23 Champions as a total of eight nations picked up gold medals. In the women’s single sculls, Aurelia-Maxima Janzen of Switzerland defended her title in that event, ahead of Anna Santruckova of the Czech Republic and Mazarine Guilbert of Belgium. Janzen will now race at the senior World Championships in Belgrade, trying to qualify that boat for the Paris 2024 Olympic Games.

In the men’s single sculls event, Turkiye’s Cevdet Ege Mutlu battled all the way with Cezary Litka of Poland, but it was gold for Turkiye ahead of the Pole – with the bronze medal going to the recent silver medallist at the World Rowing Under 19 Championships, Panagiotis Makrygiannis of Greece.

After racing was stopped for an hour due to risk of thunderstorms, it was delight for the home crowd when Jakob Geyer and Philipp Dosse of Germany crossed the line first in the men’s double sculls, ahead of Greece and Belgium – this one also in thrilling fashion, with less than two seconds separating the first four crews.

The 2024 European Rowing Under 23 Championships will be held 7-8 September 2024 in Edirne, Turkey.