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The United States’ Amanda Polk (b), Kerry Simmonds, Emily Regan, Lauren Schmetterling, Grace Luczak, Meghan Musnicki, Victoria Opitz, Caroline Lind (s) and cox Katelin Snyder race in the women’s eight heat at the 2013 World Rowing Championships in Chungju, Korea.

The fastest boat for women, the women's eight is the boat class of review today.

The season began in Sydney, Australia at the first Samsung World Rowing Cup of the season. The 2000 Olympic regatta course saw the dominant United States crew finish a shock second to a fired-up Australian crew.

Then the European nations went to Seville, Spain where decisive win at the European Rowing Championships got Romania's season up and running. The Romanians tempered Germany into second by over eight seconds.
It was not, however, until the third World Rowing Cup in the much-favoured venue of Lucerne, Switzerland that the full contingent of eights got to test their speed. And test it they did.

The United States raced their own race at the head of the field and showed that they were simply superior to everyone else. Not only that, at the finish they had set a new World Best Time. The crew of Amanda Polk, Kerry Simmonds, Emily Regan, Lauren Schmetterling, Grace Luczak, Caroline Lind, Victoria Opitz, Heidi Robbins and coxswain Katelin Snyder had reset the standard at 5:54.16. But what was more remarkable was that they were the only crew to set a new World Best Time that day and they had done it in conditions of practically no wind.

Usually World Best Times are set in strong tail wind conditions and they rarely happen in a post-Olympic year.
This result left Romania to contemplate their second-place finish and a 6.26 second deficit on the Americans. Canada was third with Great Britain in fourth.

The Lucerne race turned out to be almost a replica of the World Rowing Championships final six weeks later in Chungju, Korea. As in Lucerne, the United States established themselves as the early leaders leaving the rest of the field to fight it out for the lesser medals. Romania made the best work of the tussle breaking away from the other boats to take second with Canada in third.

Before the United States began dominating this event, Romania had been the top dog and it is common knowledge that their intention is to get back to that position. The Romanian women's eight is the country's flagship crew but lately they have been unable to ruffle the Americans. At the finish Romania was less than five seconds down on the United States and the normally sombre crew did not hide their joy at not only getting to the line before Olympic silver medallists, Canada but also finishing closer to the Americans.

Are the Romanian's closing in on the United States? Will Canada get back up to the power that helped them to their London Olympic medal? What tricks will the United States have up their sleeves for the 2014 season? In less than two months the first World Rowing Cup for the year may help to answer these questions.