Day five at the 2026 World Rowing Championships in Amsterdam, Netherlands. World championships Friday was windy, wet and delayed, in that order. A fizzing lunchtime session delivered some superb singles races, as much in one of the best ever F-finals as in the medal pathway quarter-finals earlier on. Then thundery weather shut down the worlds regatta for a while in late afternoon, before heavily delayed racing finally took place well into the evening, yielding gold and silver for the home nation alongside some gloriously unpredictable final sprints.
Ex-lightweight M1x making their mark
How on earth did we get to 2026 only to find three of the quickest quarter-finalists in the men’s singles being ex-lightweights? The world of openweight singles has been quietly turning upside down in the last few years. Tokyo champion Stefanos Ntouskos (GRE) used to be the only ex-lightweight routinely playing on even terms with guys much taller and heavier, but after Friday’s M1x round of 24 we can add several more to the list. Irish LM2x legend Fintan McCarthy carefully followed defending champion Olli Zeidler (GER) and Kai Schaetzle (SUI) over the line to book his spot in the semi-finals and still has the air of a man who isn’t quite sure how fast he can go in what is, for him, an entirely new category.
Ntouskos himself had a relatively uninspiring day, losing a lengthy second/third wrangle with another ex-lightweight, Bruno Cetraro Berriolo of Uruguay, just before halfway so stumbling home in third. Ahead of them Jonas Juel was a commanding force, making Norway proud on the same day that they lost their much-loved King Harald.
Juel was swift, but not as quick as the USA’s Sam Melvin, another who was rowing lightweight only a few years ago, who was speedy in what was still a light tailwind. Granted, his may have been one of the better races: he had to work like a beast for 1500 metres to get past another recent lightweight, Frenchman Victor Marcelot, before being able to soar away to clear water. Marcelot is now coming very good indeed, a protégé of Jürgen Grobler, who described how he and the French coaches had run a very careful training plan earlier with Marcelot to bring him to the point of competing against the best openweights.
The first quarterfinal went to the AIN2 sculler, and probably Zeidler’s biggest competition, Yauheni Zalaty, who finished three seconds clear of Aleksandr Kovalskii (AIN1), with Denmark’s Bastian Secher further back in third.
Florijn takes the sensible route to the semis
The women’s quarter-finals were a little less surprising than the men’s, at least if the background to this summer is accounted for. As well as taking time out for studies, Paris champion Karolien Florijn (NED) has had time away from the Dutch national team due to what can only be called a form of burn-out. At one stage after Paris it wasn’t obvious she would return to competition. Once she decided to, this year’s preparations were marred by her capsize in her heat in Seville, a back injury before Lucerne and now this week a disagreement between her private coach and the Dutch federation. Florijn herself admitted recently that she wasn’t in her best form ever, and it is noticeable that the organisers chose to feature the Dutch women’s double on advertising hoardings for this week’s regatta, instead of their Olympic singles champion. Then the Dutchwoman was pitted directly against Lauren Henry (GBR) in the first race of the day, with lanes redrawn to favour lane 1 after the wind swung round to a north-easterly cross-tail.
The match-up, one the rowing cognoscenti had been awaiting since the spring of 2025, was very nearly mouthwatering. Both went off fast, and the much taller Florijn led, apparently effortlessly. But Henry didn’t lose contact, and stalked her for 1600 metres before slightly raising the rate and carving mercilessly through the Dutchwoman. At which point Florijn threw in the towel. These two quality scullers were so far in front of the rest that Florijn could afford to drop her rate to the high 20s and still coast in smoothly ahead of Brazilian Beatriz Tavares.
The other big contender, defending champion Fiona Murtagh, also had a less than perfect build-up to the championships, picking up a rib injury after Lucerne. The entire Irish team then swerved the European championships three weeks ago in favour of a tough preparation camp in Banyoles. Murtagh made a neat job of winning the third quarter-final ahead of Swiss sculler Aurelia Janzen and Aussie Tara Rigney, doing so in a time nearly as rapid as that of rival Henry. The other two races were won by the persistent Viktorija Senkute (LTU) and Jovana Arsic (SRB), the Lithuanian now matched against Henry in what could be an intriguing semi-final given that due to times it also includes Florijn and the rabble-rousing South African Paige Badenhorst.
Lesser finals but not lesser racing
A series of low-rank finals followed the singles, but they still delivered plenty of enjoyment for the crowds. A two-boat PR3 mixed doubles B-final was insanely close — inches apart — with 100 metres to go before Spain bumped up the rate and pulled away. The men’s pairs B-final saw four different boats hold the lead at times and involved a rumble between the British and the Greeks (won by the latter) with Norway joining the minor places mix at the end. And then the perennially popular Martin and Valent Sinkovic ended their 2026 on a relative high with a commanding win in the M2x B-final, without needing to resort to the rate 44-47 their rivals felt necessary.
The last race of the morning was a belter. 23-year-old Puerto Rican Kevin Harvell maintaining for several minutes a slender lead over Trinidad and Tobago’s Dominique Williams, five years older. Both are US-varsity trained, at Temple and Penn respectively, and the wind had gone round to tail by the time they raced so there was little advantage for Williams in lane 1. Rating several pips higher from 1000 metres gone, Williams then jacked it up to 40 in the closing stages, much higher than Harvell, so passed and put to bed the Puerto Rican in great style. A sneak preview for 18 months time, since it is likely these two will be duelling it out at the Americas Qualifying Regatta to earn Olympic 2028 spots.
Later in the afternoon, just as the PR1 men’s singles were taking to the water for their semi-finals, an approaching thunderstorm put paid to activity on the lake for two full hours. A brisk deluge dumped tons of water on the site within minutes and sent spectators rushing to the sheltered parts of the grandstand, while thunder and lightning rumbled around. Eventually racing got underway at 17:50, with the medal finals first.
Glory for the Netherlands and unbridled Irish joy
Nobody ever gets everything they want, but the Dutch hosts came close with a glorious men’s double sculls gold on Friday and a narrow silver for the women’s double a race later. Melvin Twellaar and Simon van Dorp brought to fruition a long-held plan to dominate the horrendously competitive M2x event on home water, their effective combination of power, determination and flow taking them well ahead of Serbia who claimed silver. What happened behind them was less predictable, Britain’s new double impressing in third before it all went wrong.
“I saw the GB team caught a crab, hit a buoy, and they stopped,” said Serbian stroke Nikolaj Pimenov. “It gave me some motivation, I realised we were pretty safe, and now we need to finish it and let them come over.” The crab dropped the Brits off the pace and rattled them enough for Belgians Tibo Vyvey and Aaron Andries to take the initiative, pushing through them and Spain to claim bronze. “We were on a line for third place, we thought ‘it’s now or never’, and so we went,” said Andries. “It’s crazy, something on the bucket list.” It is Belgium’s first openweight worlds medal since 1995.
But for Twellaar and van Dorp it was the perfect race. “Luckily it went how we planned it, so that was good for us. We knew from the beginning of the season we would do the double here, it’s really special to do it at your home course,” said Twellaar. “It also brings extra nerves, yes, but also some extra support, and definitely gets us a lot of extra power.” Both would clearly like to continue the partnership, and say they don’t think they’ve yet reached their best possible speed. “I really like this double, but we will see, we don’t know what the coaches want to do.”
Between interviews they watched their women’s double, Roos de Jong and Benthe Boonstra, narrowly fail to copy their result. It went swimmingly to start with, the Dutchwomen maintaining a slender grip on the race for most of the course. But Ireland’s amazing Zoe Hyde and Margaret Cremen had other ideas, and had another gear ready, which they deployed to destroy the Dutch dreams in the last two hundred metres. De Jong and Boonstra had no answer, and the Swiss mopped up the bronze medal a long way back.
“From the second we got to Amsterdam we had this delusional belief that we could do it,” said Cremen. “I saw halfway we were with them and I said it’s now or never, I think they’re going to die,” added Hyde. “We’ve just got to keep believing, and we did.” Spurred by a roar they described as ‘electric’ from the many Irish fans who had travelled to the championships, they just kept sprinting, beating the Dutch by a second. It was Ireland’s first ever openweight Olympic-class crew gold medal, and no mean feat, especially for ex-lightweight Cremen.
Before the doubles Germans Valentin Luz and Kathrin Marchand cemented their reputation at the top of the PR3 mixed doubles, gliding to the open-water victory they craved by defending their 2025 title. They claim they never argue in the boat — “we discuss sometimes: I’m always right and he always gives me the right,” giggled Marchand afterwards. “We saw Ukraine coming closer on the last 500, and I gave another command we needed to push a bit more so that there’s still enough space,” said Luz, who is clearly more comfortable keeping the rest of the field at arm’s length.
A similar dominance appeared yet again in the women’s pairs, where Simona Radis and Adriana Adam of Romania picked up a gold to open their bidding to become the most-medalled athletes at the championships. They will stern-pair the women’s eight together but are also both in the Romanian mixed eight which races at the close of the championships. If she were to win all three, which is eminently feasible, Radis would move further towards an unshakeable claim to be the most successful championship stroke of all time.
“It’s never easy you know, not even in front of the field,” she said after the pairs final. “Not even when you have a lot of free water. But when you win, you forget the hard times and everything feels easier.” Behind them the French duo of Emma Cornelis and Hezekia Peron picked up another silver to add to their collection, having passed a fading and off-form Italy in mid-course, while the USA’s Regina Salmons and Mia Levy produced another blazing American finish, swiping bronze to go with their Lucerne gold.
However, Radis has her eyes on another prize: she and Adam finished at 99.4% of gold medal time, on percentages the best performance of any crew so far this week, and in relatively still conditions. “We can [do] much more. I still want to be the one with the record so we still have much more to do,” she explained. But for now commentator Grace Prendergast can keep the 2021 world best time she and crewmate Kerri Williams set at the Tokyo Olympics, and Radis and Adam will have to come back and beat it.
There wasn’t much doubt about the men’s pairs going Down Under, and in defending champion style it was Ben Taylor and Oliver Welch (NZL) who carried off the gold, leading Australia’s Alex Hill and Angus Dawson the entire course, but never by more than a few seconds. “It was a tough race the whole way; there was no point we knew we had it. We had to keep going,” said Welch.
“The Australians and the other crews put a lot of pressure on us, but it was good. It makes it more exciting [being close], I think it makes it more worthwhile, a bit of extra danger is fun. It’s nice to win by lots but close races are more exciting for everyone.” Incredulous Italians Matteo Lodo and Giovanni Codato, the latter brother of Alice in the Italian W2-, could not catch the two leaders but found themselves in a position to challenge and defeat Romania for bronze.
The Australians weren’t too upset, but are planning revenge. “It’s always disappointing when you fall short, but we’re really happy how we stepped through the regatta,” said Dawson. “We saw what was going on behind us and had a plan to push through the k to move away from it.” Their aim is to remain together in the pair until the LA Olympics, and already share another interest from their family businesses, that of winemaking.
The weekend to come
The eights are still keeping their powder dry — they don’t race until Saturday afternoon, which starts a packed programme for M8+ finalists: a Saturday afternoon heat, Sunday morning semi-final and Sunday afternoon final. Three by 2000 metres inside 24 hours: hard-core. There has been talk of trying to make the eights something into which small boats could double-up after they had finished racing, especially at the Olympics, and this may be the first step towards that option. It remains to be seen how popular that will be, though the 2028 Olympic qualification quota already published allows for teams to add doubling-up crews into their team in LA before the entry deadline but after formal qualification.
We also have the mixed non-para boats to look forward to, some featuring athletes who have already won medals. The mixed doubles have heats on Saturday and semis/finals on Sunday, whilst the mixed eights are a fortunately straight final closing out Sunday’s programme.
