Day three at the 2025 World Rowing Championships, in Shanghai, China. Tuesday opened with a belter of a race, a three-way fight between world champion Kenia Lechuga (MEX), Siobhan McCrohan (IRL) and Karissa Riley (CAN) for two automatic qualifying places in the lightweight women’s singles. The LW1x and LM1x might be expected to atrophy post-Paris, as the lightweight doubles have, but instead during the last few years became the place where super-talented lightweights without an obvious openweight option hone racing skills before transferring to the W1x in the last year of the Olympiad.
Lechuga has dominated at the 2025 world cup, to make up for finishing third and fourth at the last two world champs, but she had to storm it in this opening heat to stay ahead of 2023 champion McCrohan as well as under-23 graduate Riley. The trio crossed the line a second and a half apart, McCrohan third but still quicker than everyone else other than the impressive American and Chinese scullers Michelle Sechser and Pan Dandan, who led the third heat home on flat water.
None of the lightweights men’s races had margins as narrow, the winners being Felipe Kluver Ferreira (URU, also winner at the two world cup races), Julian Schoeberl (AUT) and Halil Koroglu (TUR, the reigning under-23 champion). Koroglu is something of a prodigy with two highly successful junior seasons and now under-23 success, whilst Schoeberl has been in the game for ten years longer.
From the rapid second heat one to watch will be Chinese lightweight Gu Jiantao, new to the international scene, who started to whizz the rate up to 46 in the last 100m behind Schoerberl, clinching the second place ahead of Irishman Joseph McCarthy. Gu has the speed to challenge for a medal and has drawn arguably the easier semi, but will have to find an extra gear since Kluver and Koroglu were positively dawdling as they approached the line.
The pairs semifinals served up some delicious sparring, particularly in the first women’s pairs between Romania and Italy. Both were led out by the Czechs for a couple of minutes but it wasn’t long before Italy seized the lead, a tiny margin ahead of Romania, after which followed a battle royal. Laura Meriano and Alice Codato (ITA) had the edge for a while but couldn’t sustain it after a strong assault from Simona Radis and Maria Rusu (ROU). They slowly dropped behind in the fifth minute and tailed off to the line as they realised they had done enough to get to the final.
In a stellar squad who seem to be able to create rapid crews with interchangeable athletes, Romania’s W2- stroke Simona Radis (ROU) stands out as particularly talented, equally at home sculling and rowing (often in the same regatta), one of the world’s best strokes. Her 17 championship medals over the last six years have come in the doubles and eights and all are gold and silver barring a single European bronze last year, but this is the first time she has attempted a sweep small boat in public. The whole Romanian squad clearly feel comfortable rowing behind her — she will be stroking the mixed eight too — and she effortlessly races at a base pace rate of 39.
Third place in that race came from an heroic effort by Elizabeth Witt and Jade Lindo, new to the GB senior squad. They carved their way through from fifth to qualifying in the second half, their effort inspired by the memory of a lost university friend, Katie Benson, who tragically suffered an unexpected and fatal cardiac event in March 2019.
The second women’s pairs semi was led by France’s impressive new combination Emma Cornelis and Hezekia Peron all the way, but behind them came a ding-dong battle between Serbia and the USA. The Europeans had the better of it until the Americans had a much better power lift after halfway and bored their way through without needing to hike the rate. An air of confidence suggests the US has more shots in its locker to use in the final, so Jess Thoenes and Holly Drapp will be names to keep an eye on.
