Thunder and lightning halted the final session at the European Championships on Sunday at 9:30am, during a pause in proceedings between the mixed doubles heats and the start of the B-finals. After a very hastily arranged rescheduling to let crews reach their flights on time, everything was completed only an hour late, with Romania vaulting to the top of the medal table thanks to both Olympic-class eights golds and two mixed race victories (Mix 2x and Mix 8+) to their haul at the end of the day.
The trouble began soon after the early heats had taken place. A rumbling storm drifted over the Alps and down into Varese centre, reaching the edge of the lake to the south as lightning clouds were hurried along by north-westerly winds. Only the odd spot of rain ever touched the lake, but racing was suspended for the best part of 2.5 hours with all electronic systems shut down as a precaution while lightning strikes flickered around the hills. Racing restarted on a tight schedule just after noon, with B-finals at 5-minute gaps and A-finals at 10 minutes. Rapid victory ceremonies were held informally at the medal pontoon, without anthems, and although the wind had dropped somewhat, clouds remained for the first half of racing, a welcome sun-shield after several burning days.
Romania’s double eights triumph reminded everyone how seriously they take this championships, and made up for them having to miss Lucerne to prepare for Varese. The women’s race might have been close after Friday’s world-time-beating duel with Britain, but turned into more of a parade as Romania pulled steadily away after the initial tussle with GBR. Given that middle four were having to save some energy for the mixed eights they raced particularly hard and ended inside the old European best time, if not quite as quick as the incredible mark they set on Friday.
“We’re always ready to race,” said Heidi Long from the British eight. “We’re training hard for Amsterdam in three weeks’ time but it’s great fun to be able to race at this time in the season.” “From the prelim we’re obviously really really happy to have gone the best any British crew has ever done,” said Lauren Irwin. “Going into the final it was more what we can do in this final and seeing what we can do better.”
The men’s eights race was phenomenal, an entirely fresh Romanian crew restricting Germany’s quick start to just a few feet before burning through them relentlessly to take a one-length win. “That was a nice race today, we had fun, it was great rowing from us,” said German bow-man Soenke Kruse. “We’ve improved a lot this season and it was fast, what more can I say? We can really effortlessly do a good start, it’s just something we don’t have to work a lot to do.” It’s clearly still a work in progress.
The lightweight singles, protected by the European Championships as a direct result of having so many lightweight-oriented nations in their membership, produced some sparkling racing as the sun started to burn off the clouds. A close four-way tussle in the lightweight women’s race turned into a multi-length coronation for Mariaa Zhovner (AIN 2) over Tosca Kettler (NED) and Gavriela LioLiou (GRE). And Petros Gkaidatzis (GRE) got the better of Fabio Kress (GER) and Igor Khmara (UKR), signalling perhaps a change in rivalries ahead of the Amsterdam worlds.
The PR1 singles raced early and were the first to test out the pontoon-based speedy medal ceremonies, Anna Sheremet (UKR) gliding in ahead of a very happy Eva Mol (NED) while Claire Ghiringhelli (SUI) was the best of a very spread-out pack and claimed bronze after a significant gap. “We had some issues with my health this year,” said Mol, “so unfortunately I had to skip the term [season] and we decided to do the Europeans in preparation for the world rowing championships on my home course.”
But ten minutes before the men’s race had been simultaneously the best of the day, and also later the most depressing. An hour after racing ended and three hours after he had raced, Roman Polianskyi, the Ukrainian who had come third on the water, was the subject of a protest by the Israeli team that he had not fixed his required PR1 strapping properly. The World Rowing jury considered it and two hours later announced online that the protest had been upheld. As a result Polianskyi was relegated to last, promoting Israeli sculler Shmuel Daniel to third place and bronze medallist.
It was a shame, since Polianskyi had been delighted to reach the podium in a difficult year and at his first international regatta since last year’s worlds. “It’s very hard for me because in Ukraine it’s not easy to get enough nutrition, and also you cannot sleep with the sirens,” he explained to Row360 immediately after the medal ceremony. “Athletes need their sleep to be healthy.”
The race itself had been an absolute banger. Italian home favourite Giacomo Perini, who hasn’t raced any of the other top scullers since Shanghai last September, set off so quickly that not only did he manage to get his bow in front of reigning champion Ben Pritchard (GBR) at 400 metres gone, but he was looking set for a world best. Fortunately none of the scullers were silly enough to keep up such a punishing pace, so didn’t break themselves into the headwind.
Pritchard stayed calm at Perini’s attack and within a minute was back in front, where he stayed, but only by a few metres, for the rest of the race, duking it out with Perini every time the persistent Italian had another spirited go. “I went out the blocks hard, they went harder, and I thought ‘either they’re going to set a world record or I’m going to blow, or they’re going to blow’,” said Pritchard. “The good thing is we have an experienced field, we’re racing the same people week in week out most of the time. Normally if Roman Polianskyi’s behind me I know I’m doing a good time. Because you’ve got somebody of that calibre in the field, you can really benchmark yourself against what they’re doing.”
