Drizzle saturated Paris on the first day of Olympic racing, a grey morning codicil to the sodden opening ceremony which was – sensibly – attended by very few rowers barring the handful of flagbearers who usually wield oars. None of that stopped a surprisingly large spectator contingent from plodding along to the Vaires-sur-Marne course, which was flat as a pancake under windless clouds and persistent rain.

Photo GER M1x

First up were the singles, which didn’t spring any major surprises, though defending M1x champion Stefanos Ntouskos faced a tricky combination in the first race of the day. Chilly rainy weather — which aggravates his only recently healed knee injury — and at the same time having to go up against the on-form Kiwi giant Thomas Mackintosh, who edged him out of the medals at the 2023 worlds, was a step too far. Both qualified, but if the wind does go cross, as it’s likely to do later in the week, Mackintosh will get a more sheltered lane. The top three in each race go straight to the quarterfinals, at which point the knockout gets a lot more brutal.

Most of the other men’s top seeds won their heats, world champion Olli Zeidler by a whopping 11.5 seconds over a weak field, though fifth seed Damir Martin (CRO) was beaten by Romania’s late qualifier Mihai Chiruta after a tussle down the whole course. The Olympic heats are heavily seeded, World Rowing taking most recent regattas into account, as well as previous Olympics and world championships if the crew hasn’t changed too much. Four crews are seeded in the quads and eights, there are 12 seeds in the singles, and six seeds in all other events. These are put into heats first (eg top and bottom seed race one another in the first round), in randomly-assigned lanes and then the rest of the lanes are randomly allocated to the remaining crews.

The women’s singles saw the big four — Karolien Florijn (NED), Kara Kohler (USA), Tara Rigney (AUS) and Emma Twigg (NZL) win in a comfortable show of their speed and power, though Twigg was pressed very hard by Anna Prakaten in the final quarter as the Russian-turned-Uzbek tried the same trick which got her silver in Tokyo, a sustained sprint to the line. This time Tokyo champion Twigg was already alert to the danger and tickled the pressure up just enough to hold her off with ease.

“That was a nice little surprise to draw Anna in the heat,” said Twigg. “But that’s cool, you’ve got to race everyone some time in the regatta. The first race is always the hardest, I feel, so it’s nice to get it done. It kind of went roughly to plan, in the Olympics you’re always going to get some of the nations throwing the kitchen sink at the first 500m, so for me it was just remaining cool and doing my race plan. One down, three to go.”

With the cream of the sculling world present Spain’s Virginia Diaz Rivaz doesn’t look quite the threat she did earlier in the season, and Lithuania’s Victorija Senkute did a great job overturning the form guide to shoot away from neutral athlete Tatsiana Klimovich early on. German Alexandra Foester, one of the few new arrivals in this Olympiad who has not really fulfilled her early promise, dead-heated Desislava Angelova (BUL) to the first 500m, and then rowed smoothly away to win in a slowish time very similar to that of the unpressed favourite, Florijn.

The day got noisier as the doubles took to the lake, the crowds starting to yell louder and with closer finishes. Earlier on sculler Damir Martin had pointed out that in the singles: “There’s no easy races any more. Every race will be like the final one,” but the comment could apply to any event here. The doubles were three through to the semis which made life fairly easy for any real medal hopes, but that didn’t stop them from racing every stroke of the way. The women’s doubles could turn out to be a top-drawer contest, with the nine crews which got through covering just ten seconds.

Photo UZB W1x

Standouts were Romania’s world champions, effortlessly soaring away from the pack, while behind them the Norwegian 2024 European champions Thea Helseth and Inger Kavlie had a shocker and dropped to fourth which relegates them to Sunday’s repechage of death in which whoever comes last is out of the Olympics entirely. “We tried to keep in touch, but we were left too far behind,” said Kavlie. “We were in Romania’s wake, they had a pretty sharp race today, we are hoping for a better race tomorrow. Our coach always tells us ‘no diamonds without pressure’”.

In fact the Romanians were the only 2023 medallists to win, USA settling for third behind the Kiwis and Britons, while the Lithuanians were trumped by an epic fight between France and Australia. This started with Amanda Bateman and Harriet Hudson (AUS) taking charge of the race, until the home crew surged hard through the middle 600 metres and were only a couple of seats back on the leaders as the grandstands started. Both crews responded to the huge crowd full of Parisians, but it was Elodie Ravera Scaramozzino and Emma Lunatti (FRA) who rode the emotion with a fierce final push to grab the win in the closing strokes, not quite a photofinish.

“The public were incredible, I’ve never seen that before,” said Lunatti. “Even when we were doing our warm-up we could hear everyone cheering. We could hear the fervour of the public, it was the boys [Hugo Boucheron and Matthieu Androdias] who were starting their race.”

By contrast the three top men’s doubles from the Netherlands, Ireland and Romania did win their races, but Italy and China succumbed to first-day nerves and dropped into the repechage. The Dutch looked the calmest, Stefan Broenink and Melvin Twellaar doing the minimum they needed to keep a charging New Zealand at bay, while Ireland won a feisty duel with high-rating Spain and Romania kept the speed punchy, which probably caught the Italians napping.

“We’re just grateful and appreciative, as cheesy as that sounds, to be here,” said NZL’s Robbie Manson, after returning to the sport for this Games. “Me having retired and come back, Jordan with his broken ankle 18 months ago, just to be on the start line we feel like we’ve already achieved a lot to be here, which takes some of the pressure away. We really want to enjoy it and put our best performance out there.”

The Dutch are soaring high in sculling at the moment, so it was their day, with five of their six crews winning their heats, mostly unchallenged, which feeds the whole squad. “I think it just gives confidence in what we are doing, the approach that we have,” pointed out Broenink. “Because everyone has the same approach, you can see everyone is doing well, you get pressure but you also get confidence, knowing that what we are doing really works.”

The two Dutch quads zoomed out of the start particularly fast, which might have something to do with their unusual strategy this year of going to altitude camp twice between April and June. The men’s quad lorded it over the British and Germany, the latter losing out and relegated to the rep after both had to fight for position in mid-race. A fantastic duel in heat two between perennial bridesmaids Italy and Poland resulted in a reverse of the Lucerne outcome, Italy winning the race, Poland second, and both of them squeezing out regular rivals Switzerland.

The other crew booted to the repechage in that race was Estonia, featuring Tonu Endrekson at his sixth Olympics: he has always made the medal final and twice reached the podium. As he explained, experience means that he no longer gets as nervous the previous day. “I have a proper sleep, I wake up in the morning and then the race starts. Compared with 20 years ago, I [used to be] shaking already in the evening and couldn’t get much sleep.”

The women’s quads were similar to the men, the Dutch winning the first comfortably enough (over Ukraine and China) and then a closer race for the second. This time though the British start was good enough to take them clear of the rest of the field, at which point a battle royale between Switzerland and Germany partly closed the gap again. It was China and Switzerland who lost out the most, now having to race a difficult Tuesday rep with everything to lose, though only one crew will be cut from it.

“We had a really solid run down the track,” said Anderson. “We never expect to just row off into the sunset and have a nice time. We’ve typically struggled with our starts and that’s something we’ve spent a long chunk of this season trying to perfect and trying to sharpen up. But we’ve never expected that if you have a lead it means you’ll keep it or if we’re down we’ll stay down, so we always know that the race isn’t finished until you cross the line. We responded a bit but I think we can do better as well.”

Row360 coverage of the Paris 2024 Olympic Games