Image credit: World Rowing
Hot on the heels of World Cup 1 comes the European Championships, this year being held at Szeged, Hungary’s third largest city. It’s the first time this course has hosted a major senior championships. The European Olympic Qualifying Regatta is also being held at the same time (for the singles, light doubles and PR1 singles) which has impacted on the entries for the Euro Champs.
So here’s our look at the ones to watch in each of the Olympic-class boats.
Entries: 6
2023 champions: Great Britain (Rory Gibbs, Morgan Bolding, Jacob Dawson, Tom Digby, Charlie Elwes, Sholto Carnegie, James Rudkin, Henry Fieldman).
Great Britain are the reigning World and European champions and they return to 2024 with an unchanged line-up. The only thing that has changed with the crew in 2024 is the rigging, which has switched to allow for a bucket rig. They continued their winning run with a convincing win at the first World Cup in Varese.
The main challenge to the British will likely come from Romania. They did have a crew racing in Varese, but that was a development boat. For Szeged they come with their full strength line-up, Mihaita Tiganescu, Ciprian Tudosa, Florin Arteni, Mugurel Vasile Semciuc, Constantin Adam, Sergiu Bejan, Stefan Berariu, Florin Lehaci and Adrian Munteanu. The Romanians took silver at last year’s European’s and went on to take fourth at the world championship. The majority of that crew return in 2024 and, like they have for the past couple of years, have a couple of rowers doubling-up in the M4- (Berariu & Tudosa).
The German M8 has been going through a crisis of confidence in the last few years. After a number of senior athletes retired after Tokyo along with surprise coaching changes, the Deutschland-Achter has been going through a, somewhat painful, rebuilding process. After a disastrous 2022, which saw the M8 fail to make the A-Final for only the second time in world championship history, they had a slightly better 2023, securing the fifth and final Olympic qualifying spot at the world championships. They’ve made two changes to the 2023 crew with Olympic silver medallists Laurits Follert and Hannes Ocik coming back into the crew. They had an encouraging performance at Varese, taking the bronze medal albeit two lengths off the British in gold.
Italy finished fourth in Varese and their crew includes seven of the boat that won the B-Final in 2023 (Matteo Della Valle, Jacopo Frigerio, Emanuele Gaetani Liseo, Salvatore Monfrecola, Leonardo Pietra Caprina, Vicenzo Abbagnale and Alessandra Faella). The new members of the crew are the Vicino twins, Luca and Marco. This duo are the reigning U23 BM2- World Champions. Seventh last year means that if Italy want a M8 at the Olympics they will need to race at the Final Olympic Qualifying Regatta. This line-up raced in Piediluco, winning against a predominantly U23 Romanian eight.
Austria raced at the 2023 World Championships, finishing tenth. Seven of that crew returned for 2024 and in Varese they made the A-Final – a first for an Austrian M8. They will be heading to the Final Olympic Qualifying Regatta next month more in hope than expectation, but whatever happens it’s brilliant to see the Austrian’s boating a M8.
The final crew in the event is Ukraine. They are boating an U23 crew that includes the Yakobchuk twins, Bohdan and Danylo. Seven of the nine crew members make their international debuts in Szeged, with just Maksym Semenov and coxswain Oleksandr Konovaliuk having competed at U23 level and Mykhailo Deineko raced at U19 level in 2021.
Prediction
Great Britain will be expecting to win, and win convincingly. Behind them it’ll be a battle between Germany, Italy and Romania for the remaining two medals. I’m picking the Italians to better the Germans for silver with Romania in fourth and then Austria fifth and Ukraine some distance behind in sixth.
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