Image credit: World Rowing
The second World Rowing Cup of the year promises so much. Our European contenders, who we have already seen race on one, if not two, occasions this year meet their rivals from across continents as Australia, New Zealand, the USA and a number of other heavy-hitting global players converge on Lucerne in what will be many crews’ final race before the 2024 Olympic and Paralympic Games. As always, JRN are previewing every single event in-depth as we take another enormous step forward towards the crowning moment of our sport.
Entries: Nine
The top athlete in this event is the Norwegian Birgit Skarstein. Not having tasted defeat since 2016, she has six world titles and one Paralympic gold in her trophy case. However, this is her first opportunity to race at the Lucerne Regatta as they add para-Rowing events to their programme for the first time. A win on the lake of the gods would be both a stellar achievement, plus a great step on the way to defending her Paralympic title.
The youngster of the class, Anna Sheremet of Ukraine has been competing at a senior world level since she was seventeen years old. Now 23, she has added two world championship bronzes to her collection since finishing fourth at the Tokyo Paralympics. An underwhelming start to the season saw her finish at the back of a five-boat field at the European Championships in Hungary: she will be looking to build on that ahead of her second Paralympic appearance in Paris.
A rower who had a decidedly excellent European Championships was Manuela Diening of Germany. Just three seconds behind Skarstein on her way to a silver in Szeged, it was a marked improvement on her fifth-place finish at the Belgrade World Championships. Not yet able to break onto a World Championship podium in her young career, Diening may just have the speed to win her first medal of at least that level this summer in Paris.
While Diening has never been to a Paralympics, there are two scullers in the draw who have been to four appearances. Claudia Cicero Sabino of Brazil has never quite made the podium despite being in the A Final in Beijing, London, Rio and Tokyo – she opens her fifth Paralympic campaign this weekend. While the Israeli sculler Moran Samuel has steadily improving from fifth in London to bronze in Rio and silver in Tokyo, her fourth place at both the 2024 European and 2023 World Championships suggest a strong training block through the first half of this year could help her add another medal to the collection.
The last of this weekend’s field who will be going to the Paralympics is Claire Ghiringhelli of Switzerland. Missing from the Belgrade World Championships due to thrombosis, she raced at the European Qualification finishing at the front of the small field to book her ticket to Paris. Having to race at this event meant that she was unable to compete in the concurrent championship and compare against the top Europeans that had already qualified, so this will her first true test of the season.
The Dutch entrant, Eva Mol, has been very unfortunate in her results this cycle. A world class para-climber, her first sport is not in the programme for the Paris games. Instead, she chased her Paralympic dreams within rowing. In 2023, she made her world rowing debut and finished eighth at her very first World Championships, but with only seven qualifying she missed out on punching her ticket to Paris. She was not entered into a European Qualification Regatta she may have won, instead the focus went to Lucerne and the FOPQR. A second-place finish there though wasn’t quite enough. This weekend’s racing gives her an opportunity to show what she could have done, and potentially line her up for the Paralympic cycle to come ahead of the Los Angeles Games.
There are two more entrants from those who missed out earlier in the week at FOPQR: Brenda Sardon of Argentina finished fourth at the event and will not return to the Paralympics after finishing eighth in Tokyo. Zahraa Mohamed of Egypt was always a long shot after being minutes off the pace in the African Continental Qualifier, but was much improved to finish sixth earlier in the week.
Prediction
There is no looking past Brigit Skarstein for the gold medal here, but the remaining medal spots are more open. I would back Manuela Diening to match her result from the European Championships with Moran Samuel to round out the podium.
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