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A-Final

China and Netherlands both lined up at the start. These two crews went three and four at last year’s World Rowing Championships with the Dutch being the bronze medallists. Both crews have three members back from their 2018 finals crews. In the test race yesterday the Dutch proved to be the quicker crew. Today the two crew were neck-and-neck through the first 500 of the race. The Netherlands then settled to 35 and had a slight edge over China. Both crews would have learned how the other boat would race in the test race … unless they were hiding something …

China then got a very slight edge over the Netherlands going through the middle of the race. The Chinese had done a power move and it gave them a half boat length lead over the Netherlands. The Chinese then pushed out to a boat length lead coming into the close of the race. The Dutch pushed back, but China held them off.

Results: CHN, NED

Yang Lyu, People’s Republic of China, Gold
“We are happy with the result and we did pretty well but there is a lot more that we can improve on.”

Inge Janssen, Netherlands, Silver
“This race was better than yesterday. It sucks when there are only two crews in a race – you either win or you lose. This boat was just thrown together the other day.” 

Re-watch the race here!