Junior Men’s Quadruple Sculls (JM4x) – Final

In the semifinals Switzerland and Great Britain won their respective races in very similar times. They had met in the heats earlier in the week with Switzerland getting the better of the British. They sat together in the middle lanes waiting for the start. At the start Denmark hit 52 but it was Switzerland, rating 42, that got away the best and into the lead. Great Britain also got away well. Both the Swiss and Italian crews had rowers that raced last year in their country’s eight. This experience must have been useful. At the first 500m mark Switzerland was motoring along with a virtual line forming behind them. Switzerland took gold at the European Rowing Junior Championships and they were now more than a boat length up.

Huehn, Condrau, Gulich and Copes of Switzerland still had the lead through the third 500 with the high rating Italy in the silver position. Then the British pushed into second and tried to catch the Swiss. Great Britain started to sprint first and they were at 39 with Italy and Switzerland at 41 and then 43 as Italy and Great Britain came on strong. The medallists were decided but the order was oh so tight. The Swiss had won with Great Britain just pipping Italy.

Results: SUI, GBR, ITA, GER, DEN, GRE

Dominic Condrau (s), Switzerland, gold 
“We really just wanted a medal. To take home the gold is the best. The race was quite good, but the blades felt very heavy with the wind. We followed our race plan, but we had to add in some extra bursts to stay ahead of the others.”

Tom Smith, Great Britain, silver
“I am really happy, the crew has come together really well recently. It was a good race today, we had to really give it our all. We had a big call at the end to try and stay ahead of Italy. I really enjoyed being here, it’s a great venue.”

Leonardo Radice Karoschitz (s), Italy, bronze
“In the last 500m we were really fighting it out with GB, but we came up a little short. We had a very big sprint at the end.”

B-final

Poland missed out on making the final by less than half a second and they led the way today. Behind them it was incredibly close between four boat made up of New Zealand, Australia, the Czech Republic and the United States. This took the crews up on Poland who was overtaken by the US and the Czech Republic. The Czechs went to 42 in the final sprint but the Americans held them off as five crews crossed the line within three seconds of each other.

Results: USA, CZE, AUS, EST, POL, NZL