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: 4
2023 Champions: Romania (Magdalena Rusu, Roxana Anghel, Adriana Adam, Maria Lehachi, Madalina Beres, Ioana Vrinceanu, Simona Radis, Victoria-Stefania Petreanu).
Romania are the reigning European and World Champions and they return to defend their title with eight out of the nine athletes who won in Bled (the only change is Iuliana Buhus comes into the crew in place of Simona Radis after the Europeans and raced to gold at the Worlds). Five of the crew, Rusu, Lehachi, Vrinceanu, Amalia and Madalina Beres raced in the W8 at the Tokyo Olympics (although their sixth-placed finish was the worst by a Romanian W8 since Montreal in 1976). As a side note, Romania are the only nation to race the W8 at every Olympic Games. As is common practice for both the men’s and women’s squads, the Romanians are doubling-up, with Anghel and Vrinceanu racing the pair and Rusu, Lehaci and the Beres sisters in the W4-.
Italy were winners at the Varese World Cup, sprinting through the British to take the win by 7/tenth of a second. They have the same line-up that finished sixth at the World Championships last year – meaning they missed Olympic qualification. Their performance in Varese will have put them in a good place heading into Lucerne.
Great Britain may count themselves unlucky to have lost to the Italians in Varese, a loss they put down to doubling-up in the W4- and racing that final only an hour before the W8 final. With no such doubling-up in Szeged, they will be confident that they will be able to hold off the Italians and give the Romanians a real run for their money. They finished fourth at the 2023 World Championships and have five returners for the 2024 boat. Joining the crew are Holly Dunford (U23 World Champion), Rowan McKellar and Heidi Long (bronze medallists in the W4-) and former Dutch international Eve Stewart.
German women’s sweep rowing has always been the poor relation to their sculling programme (the German W8 last won a World Championship medal in 2006 and you have to go back to 1992 for the W8 to have last won an Olympic medal). If the German’s want to race at the Olympics this year they will need to go to the Final Olympic Qualifying Regatta. Their crew for Varese is a mix of youth and experience. Sophie Leupold, Lena Osterkamp and Melanie Goeldner finished 11th in the W4- last year and Nora Peuser and Tabea Kuhnert were in the crew that finished fourth at the European Championships last year. The youth element of the crew comes from former junior world medallist Annabelle Bachmann and U23 international Judith Guhse. They raced in Varese finishing fourth, albeit ten seconds off the Italians.
Prediction
It’s difficult to bet against the Romanians, although doubling-up might count against them. The British will be expecting to get close to Romania and it’s not out of the question that they may get the better of them. But, I’m going to pick Romania to retain their title, who will be pushed hard by Great Britain with Italy in bronze some way ahead of the Germans.
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