Men's Double Sculls (M2x) - Final

The rain continued and the water remained completely flat as these 12 scullers sat in the starting blocks. The World and European Champions Croatia had recorded the fastest qualifying time in the heats two days ago with Germany being the next fastest. All other crews had to go through a repechage yesterday to make it to today’s final. Martin and Valent Sinkovic of Croatia took a very small lead before the first 500m mark, but the 2015 bronze medallists, New Zealand then pushed into the lead. This is a very unusual situation and in the last two years the Sinkovics have been leading races from start to finish and winning by big margins.

Robert Manson and Christopher Harris of New Zealand remained in first through the middle of the race rating 36 strokes per minute. Could the New Zealanders keep it up. Germany’s Marcel Hacker and Stephan Krueger sat in third.

Just before the 1500m mark Croatia got into the lead. Could Manson and Harris hold on to their fast early pace? Now the 2015 silver medallists, Rolandas Mascinskas and Saulius Ritter of Lithuania had upped their tempo to 45 and were overtaking Germany and going after New Zealand. The Sinkovics won, but by one of their smaller margins. Manson and Harris owned the silver and the Lithuanians took bronze.

Results: CRO, NZL, LTU, GER, GBR1, GBR2

B-final

Hugo Boucheron and Matthieu Androdias of France led from start to finish. They were able to watch a close battle go on between Germany, Australia, the United States and Azerbaijan.  Germany was able to pull into second but they could not catch the French.

Results: FRA, GER2, CUB, AZE, AUS, USA

Martin Sinkovic (b), Croatia, gold
“This was a new situation for us with the New Zealanders leading at the 1000m, we are not used to that. But I think we showed our character and proved that we can still win a race even when we’re not leading halfway through. A race like this is a good test case for Rio.”

Christopher Harris (s), New Zealand, silver
“It is a good stepping stone on the way to Rio. In the lead-up we go down to Varese to train, we race in Poznan then in Switzerland for training and finally Rio. We know what we need to work on.”

Saulius Ritter (s), Lithuania, bronze
“It was such a tough race because the rain is really not a good condition for me. Nevertheless, we are very happy with these results.”