Lightweight women’s quadruple sculls (LW4x) – Final

Earlier in the week the heats indicated that this would be a tight race between Great Britain and Germany. These two crews met for the first time today. Germany’s Thoma, Pieper, Mueller and Noske got away quickly with Australia chasing hard. The lower rating Great Britain then slowly moved up on Australia and came into the final sprint in second place.

Meanwhile Germany had been keeping the leaders place and they could see the British coming. Germany took their stroke rate to 40 to counter the charging British, who were using a longer stroke style and were on 38. The Dutch were also moving. The Netherlands are the reigning World Champions, but with a new crew this year they were relatively untested. At the line the Germans had held on to gold, Great Britain took silver and the Netherlands earned bronze.

Results: GER, GBR, NED, AUS, CHN, USA

Anja Noske (s) – GER – gold
“The race was good but hard. I was looking forward since last night to have burning legs during the finish.”

Brianna Stubbs (b) – GBR – silver
“We wanted gold and if was not our goal, we would have finished fourth. Everyone pushed so hard, it is tough to win a medal.”

Elisabeth Woerner (3) – NED – bronze
“We had to stay calm and we found a very good pace. We hoped to win a medal and we got it. We trained only three weeks together.”

B-final

Argentina got away the quickest, but only just over Italy. The Italian boat sees a young crew and they were nicely keeping up with the Argentina. Conte, Kraljev, Wilvers and Rohner of Argentina held a very steady 37 stroke rate through the body of the race to hold the lead until the end.

Results: ARG, ITA, DEN