Germany's women's quadruple sculls
Germany's Carina Baer (2) and Julia Lier (3) during the A-final of the women's quadruple sculls at the 2014 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam, the Netherlands.

They all raced at the World Rowing Cup in Aiguebelette earlier in the season but in different boats. Today they met the reigning World Champions, Germany. Germany has also come through the World Rowing Cup season as the leaders and they were the first to show at the start. It did not take Annekatrin Thiele, Carina Baer, Julia Lier and Lisa Schmidla of Germany long to earn a full boat length lead. But the race had only just begun and margins remained very tight between the rest of the field.

The United States then showed that they had the power and moved into second as New Zealand and Canada dropped off the pace. There was still half of the race to go and Germany was looking very comfortable in first. China then did a big push and they overtook Australia and moved up on the United States. But the US had more to give and they countered China’s push. It was not enough. In the final sprint Germany charged home to earn a new World Best Time. China shook off the United States to take second and the US held on to third.

The Germans had set a new standard of 6:06.84 – three seconds faster than the previous time set just last year by Germany.

Results: GER, CHN, USA, AUS, NZL, CAN

Gold – BAER, Carina (GER)
I’m really happy as it’s really hard to race as the favourites. It’s the first time I had to defend the title.

Silver – ZHANG, Xinyue (CHN)
I am very happy, pity we couldn’t get first but we have great support.

Bronze – Coffey, Olivia (USA)
Doing well last year was great but this year it’s more meaningful.

B-final

Belarus was oh so close to qualifying in the semifinals two days ago and with Ekaterina Karsten in the bow it was likely that they would do well today. But Poland had other ideas. They rated 36 through the body of the race to stay in front. The Netherlands were sitting in second and were very much on the pace to attack. The crowd was loving it as the Dutch got their bow in front just 3m before the end.

Results: NED, POL, GBR, BLR, RUS, ITA