9 July 2018 

The last 2018 World Cup regatta is coming up in Lucerne, Switzerland, on 13-15 July, FISA writes in a press release, here with some additional information from HTBS.

The 2018 World Rowing Cup concludes in Lucerne, Switzerland next weekend with the third regatta in the series. This will be the last major opportunity for racing before the all-important World Rowing Championships in September.

More than 600 rowers from 37 nations will be competing across 18 boat classes. Australia comes to their second World Cup of the season with the largest team of 74 athletes. At World Rowing Cup II, Australia won gold in both the men’s and women’s fours.

China is also sending a large team as part of the ongoing growth of rowing in their country which saw the recent hiring of five-time Olympic Champion Sir Steve Redgrave of Great Britain as Technical Director. China had medal success in the women’s four and women’s quadruple sculls at World Rowing Cup II with these boats racing again in Lucerne.

A showdown in the women’s single sculls is expected between World Champion Jeannine Gmelin of Switzerland, who won the Princess Royal Challenge Cup last weekend, and Austria’s Magdalena Lobnig. These two had an incredibly close race at last month’s World Rowing Cup II with Gmelin winning. Now Lobnig will have to race Gmelin in front of Gmelin’s home crowd.

The men’s single sculls has huge depth with winner of World Cup II Robert Manson of New Zealand up against his fellow New Zealander and Olympic Champion Mahe Drysdale, who took his sixth Diamond Challenge Sculls on Sunday, World Champion and winner of World Cup I Ondrej Synek of the Czech Republic, who was this year’s winner of the Holland Beker, is also racing along with Olympic silver medallist Damir Martin of Croatia. There is also World Cup II silver medallist Tim Ole Naske of Germany facing fellow German and medallist from both World Cups this season, Oliver Zeidler.

The United States has entered a men’s and women’s eight in their first international outing for the 2018 season. There are high expectations on both crews with the women’s eight having held an 11-year unbeaten winning streak at the World Championships and Olympics that lasted until 2017. The women will face strong crews from Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The men will be up against the reigning World Champions Germany as well as Canada and the Netherlands.

World Champions Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler of New Zealand have been dominating the women’s pair and will face Canada’s Caileigh Filmer and Hillary Janssens for the first time this season. Filmer and Janssens took gold at World Rowing Cup I. The Czech men’s pair, Lukas Helesic and Jakub Podrazil, winners in Linz, are up against the Sinkovics of Croatia again.

Racing begins on Friday 13 July at 9:30 CET with International followed by Olympic boat classes. Racing then progresses through repechages and semifinals to the finals which will be raced over two days – Saturday 14 and Sunday 15 July 2018.

There will be live video streaming of the A-finals on www.worldrowing.com.

Regatta information can be found here.