At the start Italy Two had the lead with Jonathan Clegg and Sam Scrimgeour of Great Britain then taking over.

But margins were very tight and with just 500m left to row there were three boats all vying for the top spot – Great Britain, the Czech Republic and Switzerland. The Czech Republic’s Jiri Kopac and Miroslav Vrastil had won at the World Rowing Cup in Aiguebelette and they must have been looking for a repeat performance. In the final sprint Niepmann and Tramer used the crowd support to get to the line first with a very happy Kopac and Vrastil taking second over Clegg and Scrimgeour.

Results: SUI, CZE, GBR, FRA, AUS, ITA1

 

Gold – NIEPMAN, Simon (SUI)

The home field is always special because we train here in the summer, we love it here. We had great supporters. Really tough race, we stayed in the pack. At one point we were behind GBR. At the third 500 we were lucky to get the last push. If there had been another 10m the CZE would have taken over. We are unbeaten, so we have lots of work to do for the rest of the season to not let people catch up with us.

Silver – VRASTIL JR, Miroslav (CZE)

We knew the Swiss crew was really fast, we tried from the start to the finish, when we looked at the 500m which were left, we knew it was close so we tried to do our best. We will see each other again in Amsterdam with other crews like Argentina and France.