24 May 2018
Next Friday, 1 June, the first World Rowing Cup of the year starts in Belgrade, Serbia, Worldrowing.com (FISA) announced yesterday in a press release. The press release continues (with some additional information by HTBS):
The World Rowing Cup regatta has attracted athletes from 42 countries. The events being raced include the 14 Olympic boat classes, three international boat classes and four para-rowing boat classes.
The men’s single sculls is well represented with 37 entries. Leading the way in this boat class is likely to be multiple Olympic medallist Ondřej Synek of the Czech Republic. Synek is the reigning World Champion and he will face Angel Fournier Rodriguez of Cuba, world silver medallist in 2017, as well as Croatia’s Damir Martin, who took an Olympic silver medal in 2016 and a fourth place at the World Championships in 2017.
Among the women single scullers, the 2017 World Champion Jeannine Gmelin of Switzerland is back for another season. She will be the hot favourite with challenges likely to come from Annekatrin Thiele of Germany and Magdalena Lobnig of Austria, who took the bronze medal in the boat class at the World Championships last year.
After taking a year’s break, Ilse Paulis of the Netherlands, the 2016 Olympic champion in the lightweight women’s double sculls, returns to elite rowing. Paulis is teamed up with Marieke Keijser, silver medallist at the 2017 World Rowing Championships and twice under-23 World Champion in the lightweight women’s single sculls. They will face strong crews from Poland and the United States.
The biggest team is the Netherlands with 22 crews competing. This includes two para-rowing crews and four crews entered in the men’s four. Winners of the 2017 World Cup series, Great Britain has entered 21 crews and both Germany and China have 20 crews, respectively, coming to Belgrade. The large Chinese turnout includes three entries in the women’s pair and three in the lightweight women’s single sculls.
Racing begins on Friday 1 June at 9 a.m. CET with heats for the para-rowing boat classes followed by International and Olympic boat classes. Racing then progresses through repechages and semifinals to the finals, which will be raced over two days – Saturday 2 June in the afternoon and Sunday 3 June in the morning finishing at 2 p.m. CET.
There will be live video streaming of the A-finals on www.worldrowing.com.
Regatta information can be found here.
The World Rowing media guide will be online (from 25 May) here.
The overall World Rowing Cup winners are determined after the third event. This year, the three stages of the series are Belgrade, Serbia (1-3 June), Linz-Ottensheim, Austria (21-24 June) and Lucerne, Switzerland (13-15 July).