Race summary of day three at World Champs

Twenty additional boats secured spots in the finals through the repechages, having missed out in the first round of heats earlier in the week.

The final round of heats were also raced, these being  for the women and men’s eight. The United States, Great Britain, Canada and Romania all managed to get through to Sunday’s final in the women’s event and Germany and Great Britain qualified for the final in the men’s event. All other eights will race in the repechage on Thursday.

Preliminary races, for those events with less than seven entries, were raced in the men’s coxed pair, lightweight men’s quadruple sculls and the lightweight women’s quadruple sculls. This gave a chance for athletes to have a practice run and also set the tone for their final later this week.

The large field in the men’s single meant that four repechages were raced. With only the top two boats going through to the semifinal, racing was intense and close. Belgium’s Tim Maeyens proved to be the strongest, qualifying with the fastest time.

In the repechage for the lightweight men’s double sculls Greece just scraped through to qualify when they raced to a photo finish with Austria. It also took a photo finish for Great Britain, in the lightweight men’s pair, for them to qualify when they just piped Switzerland at the line. 

In the adaptive events, Brazil, Ukraine, Russia and France go through from the repechage to the A-final in the men’s adaptive single to join Great Britain and New Zealand who qualified through Monday’s heats.

Brazil took the lead in the adaptive mixed double event ahead of Australia, Italy, Israel and Russia. The first four go through to the A-final.

In the adaptive mixed four, Poland faced absolute disappointment when two seat caught a boat-stopping crab shortly before the finish line. This set them back to last position in a repechage that would qualify only two crews for the A-final. This meant that Ireland and the United States were the two boats to qualify for the final.

Adaptive women’s singles and intellectually disabled fours raced in a preliminary race today and will return to race in the actual final on Thursday.