Great Britain’s rowers enjoyed another hugely successful World Cup weekend, with an eight-medal haul building the momentum nicely as they gear themselves up for their last Rio preparations.
At the final World Cup event in Poznan, Poland, both the women’s coxless pair and men’s coxless four surged to impressive gold medals.
Helen Glover and Heather Stanning powered away from New Zealand in the final 100m to break their own World Cup best time of 6:52.79, with Romania coming home third.
“We didn’t want a race with all the bells and whistles today and we’ve been training pretty heavily coming into Poznan,” said Glover.
“Over the next few weeks is when we will add those bells and whistles.”
Alex Gregory, Moe Sbihi, George Nash and Constantine Louloudis showed they are now the crew to beat as they stormed to victory by a length on World Champions Italy and early-season rivals Australia.
“We put a few things right today and it felt good to do that. It was our last chance to try things out before Rio,” said London 2012 Olympic Champion Gregory.
Elsewhere, the final race of the day saw the men’s eight battle bravely in a stroke by stroke battle with Germany, before taking silver at the death in what was a big step up from Lucerne.
Jonny Walton and John Collins produced one of their career-best performances but were just pipped by a sprint finish from New Zealand in the men’s open double, while GB’s European Champion women’s eight also missed out to the Kiwis.
Alan Campbell added a bronze to the British tally in the men’s single, as did Alan Sinclair and Stewart Innes, who beat teammates Nathaniel Reilly O’Donnell and Mat Tarrant in a photo finish in the men’s pair.
The lightweight men’s four of Chris Bartley, Mark Aldred, Jono Clegg and Peter Chambers rounded off the medals, and British Rowing’s Performance Director Sir David Tanner believes the side are getting better all the time with the Olympics just round the corner.
“We have really moved on since Lucerne which we needed to,” he said.
“Today will give us confidence to go on our training camps and prepare for a strong Olympic regatta. We know we still more hard yards to put in.”
Sportsbeat 2016