Japan leads medals at Universiade

These medals came in the lightweight women’s double sculls (Azami Oishi and Chiaki Tomita) and the lightweight men’s four (Shota Araki, Tsuguto Hayashi, Takumi Shiga and Kakeru Sato). With a third crew in the A-final of the lightweight men’s double on the final day regatta day, Japan has the chance for a perfect regatta if this crew also prove able to capture the gold.

The lightweight women’s double final was particularly exciting with less than 1.75 seconds separating first through to fourth. Oioshi and Tomita were in second place at the 500m check point behind Leonie Pieper and Katrin Thoma of Germany, who blasted out of the starting gates. Germany couldn’t hold on and fell back into fifth place, ahead of Canada’s Katherine Macauley Walker and Alexandra Stefanovski who placed sixth.

Although Japan held onto their lead through the second, third and final 500m segments of the race, there was strong competition from Italy (Eleonora Trivella and Valentina Rodini) and Poland (Monika Kowalska and Martyna Mikolajczak). These crews were bow to bow through the middle thousand metre stretch, with neither crew backing down. Poland’s final charge put them just ahead of Italy at the line to take the silver with a time of 7:06.14 to Italy’s 7:06.23. Another challenger also emerged in the final 500m of the race, as the Dutch crew of Ellen De Boer and Amber Kraak, and almost pushed onto the podium, but finished just shy of a medal in 7:06.72 despite an incredible sprint to the line.

Germany stands in second place on the medals table after taking gold in the men’s four and silver in both the lightweight men’s four and women’s four.

Hungary and Ukraine are tied in third place overall, earning gold medals in the men’s pair and women’s four respectively.

Italy sits in fourth with one silver medal (men’s pair) and three bronze medals (men’s four,lightweight women’s double and lightweight men’s four). The Netherlands ranks fifth after their silver medal performance in the men’s four and two bronze medals earned in the women’s four and men’s pair. Poland’s silver in the lightweight women’s double places them sixth in the medal standings following the second day of racing.

Tuesday will see finals for the remaining seven events and more medals will be distributed to the top three performers.

For more information and full results: http://www.gwangju2015.com/