Image Credit: World Rowing
With 41 events being contested across the week on the Royal Canadian Henley Rowing Course, the fastest boats will be right here in the U23 men’s eights. Crews have been entered by six of the world’s pre-eminent rowing powers and it will be a showdown of the best of the next generation.
Great Britain
Since 2019, the gold medal in this event has been the sole possession of Great Britain. The margin has ranged from razor-thin to a full length, and this year they have selected a crew with the intention to stretch their winning streak to five. For a national team crew, it contains serious firepower from across the rowing world. The bow pair contains two members of the imperious Cambridge Boat Race crew from March, who have refocused for this boat. The middle four contains the contingent who are based in the United States, one at Yale and the other three who won silver at the IRA Championship in the Harvard varsity eight. The stern pair and coxswain come straight from the most impressive university crew that Europe has ever seen. In the Oxford Brookes Eight, they defeated the Dutch Olympic silver medalists on the Bosbaan and won the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta. While half the crew has changed since last year, there is enough winning pedigree that the expectation will be that they retain the gold medal.
United States
The last non-British crew to win this event and winners of each silver medal along GB’s record run, the United States are hungry to disrupt their friends from across the Atlantic. Coached by Wyatt Allen of Dartmouth, the crew contains representatives from five different colleges but has a strong component from the University of Pennsylvania. The stern three are all members of the quickly-rising program and will be rowing in a sweep boat internationally for the first time next week. In the rest of the boat, two members of the crew return from last year’s crew plus a rower and a cox who won bronze in the coxed four in 2023, while Kian Aminian, the youngest member of the crew, has a bronze medal from the junior world championships two years ago. Having been training together only since mid-July, how well they have gelled will be key in determining their success in an almost-home world championship.
Germany
With only two members of last year’s bronze medal crew returning to the boat there is a lot of change in the German eight. Add to that Paul Klapperich from the B-Final pair and Johann Svoboda from an underwhelming coxed four, this crew is left with a lot of new members of the German sweep squad. Three members of the crew raced at the European championships later last summer, but fourth in a five-boat field does not inspire too much confidence but the final rower in the crew certainly maximises the excitement in this crew. Seven-seat Maximilian Pfautsch has never lost at a world championship with a gold medal in each of the U23 and junior quads, but after his first year at the University of California, he has switched into the eight for this year. While one exciting athlete cannot make a crew, the German selectors will be hoping that the crew can come together to produce a result greater than the sum of its parts and claim a medal in this event for the second year in a row.
Romania
Romanian crews are notoriously difficult to evaluate. As a country of 19 million which is able to hold its own on a global stage of more traditional rowing nations, they very rarely follow a stable development pathway into the senior team. Instead, they opt for crews that very rarely get a test before their major peak, trying out a variety of options before the ultimate selection decision is made. This crew is a testament to that, containing five members of the men’s eight that raced at the Poznan World Rowing Cup alongside three members of last year’s sixth-placed boat in this event. The highlight of the crew sits in the seven-seat: Andrei Mandrila, just off the back of placing fifth at the Olympics in his first season mostly with the senior team. With the mixture of backgrounds and quick changes in the crew, there may be some disadvantages in the very short time they have had to prepare together but with high quality rowers on board, they are sure to be in with a shout.
Australia
Mostly drawn from their US-based athletes, the Australian eight marks the international debuts for seven of the nine young men in the boat, with only Alexander Baroni and Harry Manton returning from the eight that placed fourth in this event twelve months ago. After their selection camp in Princeton after the IRA Championships had left the course, the crew that emerged contained four rowers based at the University of California alongside three Ivy Leaguers. The one Australian-based athlete in the crew is Drew Weightman of the University of Queensland who is in the crew alongside Harvard’s Ben Scott. The inclusion of these two in the crew is notable as their fathers Dave and Rob rowed in a pair to Olympic silver in 1996. Whatever the pedigree, this crew will have to show they have the mettle on the course in Ontario and with very little international experience on board – the only way is up.
Canada
On home water, the Canadian eight returns to this event after a year away and this crew is notably homegrown. Just two of the crew ply their trade south of the border at American universities with a massive five representatives coming from the University of British Columbia alone with one representative each from Queen’s and Western Universities. The latter has the most experience out of anyone in this crew, having raced at the last two U23 world rowing championships as well as in Lucerne to prepare for the championships. With only six boats entered into the event, this will be the first time that anyone in the crew will see a global A-Final, but with such limited success in their previous rowers, a first medal in this event since 2008 seems beyond them.
Prediction
Not only is the history very much on the side of the British but they have also named an incredibly strong crew and I would be rather surprised if anyone could take the gold away from them. For the remainder of the medals, the field is remarkably open but the United States have been able to reliably claim at least silver medals regardless of the combination since 2018 and the German crew looks like an interesting shout for bronze.
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