Men’s Eight (M8+) – Final

Germany showed the way in the test race yesterday with Poland in second. Today the leading boat at the start was Great Britain with Germany in hot pursuit. The British are the World and Olympic Champions while Germany won the Olympics in 2012. Germany also came through last month to become the European Champions. This set up a rivalry between the two countries and just before the 500m mark Germany got into the lead. But there was absolutely nothing in it. Germany was at 39 strokes per minute and had earned a small lead over Great Britain with New Zealand now in the picture. The New Zealand crew raced at the Olympics and there has been only some change from this crew. New Zealand went to 41 to try and get ahead of Great Britain. And it worked.

Germany continued to lead and now had a small but handy margin. They then took it to a clear water lead with New Zealand now pulling away from Great Britain. At the line the Germans had won the gold and set a new World Best Time and World Cup Best Time of 5:18.68. This broke the 2012 time by just under a second. New Zealand held on to silver and Great Britain took bronze.

Results: GER, NZL, GBR, AUS, POL  

Malte Jakschik, Germany, gold
“It was a really nice race. Our cox said that we went really fast but I never thought that we would break a record. The next step is Henley and then Lucerne when we will race again against Great Britain and New Zealand. They are really nice competitors.”

Adam Neill, Great Britain, bronze
“Tough race yesterday, but I felt we came together better today. We recently lost Tom in the crew, but we are starting to get there as a whole.”