Six kilometres of open water, a north-westerly headwind on the hardest stretch and a 0.79-second margin at the line: the men's solo final at the 2026 World Rowing Coastal Championships in Qingdao came down to the closing metres. Alexis Fortier of France withstood a late surge from the USA's Christopher Bak, who narrowed the gap to half a length but no further.
The Americans still left the Yellow Sea with the most to show. USA crews won three golds and two silvers to take the team trophy and top the medal table, ahead of hosts China. China, France, Italy and Finland each won one gold over a final day that ran seven A finals off Golden Beach. It was the first time the coastal worlds had been held in China, with athletes from 18 countries and regions racing over three days.
France’s Alexis Fortier finds a way through
Finland's Joel Naukkarinen had the quickest start in the men's solo before Bak, already a world champion that morning (CM2x), went past him. Fortier was boxed into the pack at the first buoy and then caught the leaders one by one. Naukkarinen dropped back with trouble on the pin of his right-side oarlock, and in the third quarter Fortier drew level with Bak and edged ahead.
"I was involved in a clash at the second buoy and I lost some ground, then I managed to catch up person by person and got past. I never gave up and carried on to the finish. It went well and I'm very happy," Fortier said.
He went home with two medals, having taken bronze in the men's double sculls with his brother Aymeric. Naukkarinen took bronze in the solo. Ireland's Kealan Mannix and Ronan Byrne, racing their second final of the day, came fourth and sixth.
American clean sweep of the morning
The USA won the first three finals: women’s solo, men’s double, women’s coxed quad. Kory Rogers and Bak's men's double sculls gold reclaimed the title they won in 2023 and lost in Genoa in 2024, when they broke an oar while leading. In Qingdao they were 22 seconds clear after 800m and around 150m ahead by the finish. European champions Mannix and Byrne took silver and the Fortier brothers bronze, while a pile-up at the 1,000m buoy left three crews backing down and untangling oars.
"We kept pushing. You never know what can happen on a buoy. You can't tell on camera, but the wind is really strong today, the surface of the water is pretty flat but you really felt that heavy, heavy wind. So we kept trying to push every stride that we could," Bak said.
In the women's coxed quad, China's Team Liaoning crew, whose cox Shuyu Liu was 13 and the youngest competitor at the championships, rounded the 1,000m buoy six seconds up. They caught a boat-stopping crab at 1,700m and fell from first to last. USA01 had finished fifth in their heat but came out of the chaos in front and held on.
"We had a good first half, and then around that one buoy our coxswain (Natalie Cleri) took a really good turn, and that's where we got ahead. And we just held them off for the rest of the race," said Solveig Imsdahl.
Rogers also took second place in the mixed double sculls with Sera Busse. That event went to Finland's Naukkarinen and Eeva Karppinen, who had each won a solo bronze earlier in the day.
Two silvers for Great Britain’s Bass Andre
Britain's best day belonged to Bass Andre of Shanklin Sandown Rowing Club. In the women's solo, the opening final, early leaders Christine Cavallo (USA01) and Karppinen were pushed to the wrong side of the first buoy and had to back down. Audrianna Boersen (USA02) went clear, and Andre worked through to overlap her and then took the lead around 4,200m.
Boersen stayed close with good turns and retook the lead with about a kilometre left. Andre took one turn too wide and was rating around 26 to Boersen's 31 on the run into the final chicane. Boersen won the sprint for gold, and Karppinen recovered from her early setback to take bronze.
"One of my goals personally was to get out to the first buoy really quick, and it's always been said that's a really pivotal point of the race, but I really saw that today," Boersen said. "I was in line with everybody and came out of that first turn and that was the first moment I was like 'I could medal'."
Andre was back out for the women's coxed quad a couple of races later, alongside Lara Brittain, McKenna Simpson and Megan Hewison, with Jerry Owen coxing. Owen's lines through the turns put Great Britain second behind the Americans. Through the headwind section, Peru's crew, which included Olympians Adriana Sanguineti and the Palacios twins, sat on their stern. Great Britain answered each push and held them off for silver.
Simpson, Hewison and Andre had all raced the solo final that morning. Simpson, a Canadian rowing for Tynemouth, finished sixth, Hewison was 11th and Bry Jones 17th, losing a sprint to the line with the USA's Dana Duta for 16th.
Home success for China
Zhang Yuanyuan and Sun Luping of Team Liaoning gave China gold in the women's double sculls, ahead of the Palacios twins and France's Charline Lebreton and Marine Delanoe. ASD Canottieri Gavirate led the men's coxed quad from the first buoy for Italy, with Monaco holding off Rowing Club Genovese for silver.
