Image credit: World Rowing
The final World Cup in Olympic year is always a bit of a strange affair. It’s often a mix of Olympic-bound crews looking for some final race practice, and nations looking to give experience to their development boats ahead of the next Olympic cycle. This year’s final World Cup is no different. The host for this World Cup is the Lake Malta course in Poznan, one of the most frequently used courses in all of World Rowing.
So, here’s our look at who to watch out for in each event and also perhaps a few names to watch for the LA Olympic cycle.
Entries: 6
This field is headlined by Italy’s Giacomo Perini. Back in Lucerne we saw a star-studded line up including Australia’s Erik Horrie. Horrie’s 2024 season debut saw him finish ten seconds behind Perini, who himself played second fiddle to Roman Polianskyi at the European championships. With Polianskyi absent from both World Cup II and III Perini has a phenomenal opportunity to establish himself as the clear challenger to Polianskyi, the latter having won every world championship regatta since 2019, including the Paralympic final.
Perini has been nipping at the heels of the Ukrainian and at the 2022 and 2023 world championships was just five seconds back on each occasion.
While the Italian brings a huge amount of youthful energy, Horrie has bags of experience including five world championship titles and three Paralympic silver medals. Horrie has been out of the medals on his two last cracks at a world championships, placing fourth and receiving a DNS in 2022 and 2023 respectively.
In 2022 and 2023 Horrie has slipped behind Great Britain’s Benjamin Pritchard. The Welshman has raced once this season and has a bronze medal to show for his sterling efforts at the European championships, placing behind the aforementioned Polianskyi and Perini. Pritchard was only five seconds behind the Italian sculler and it certainly wouldn’t be an outrageous proposition to imagine Pritchard sneaking past him come Paris, given his rise through the ranking after placing fifth in Tokyo.
Pritchard is joined by Jake Woods from Great Britain who makes his international debut in Poznan.
This high-calibre field is bolstered by Germany’s Marcus Klemp, who first broke onto the international stage in 2002. In the more recent years of his illustrious career, Klemp has always featured in an A-Final after being pushed into the B-Final of this event in Tokyo and even picked up a couple of bronze medals along the way. In 2024, the German came through the repechage to reach the A-Final of the Europeans but he was nearly a minute back on bronze medalist Pritchard in sixth place.
The sixth and final sculler is Tunisia’s Maher Rahmani. A fresh addition to the international scene in 2023, he placed third in the C-Final at last year’s world championships and followed it up with an eighth-placed finish at this year’s Europeans.
Prediction
Perini will likely top this one but I would love to see how close Pritchard can get to the Italian.
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