3 June 2019

During the weekend, European countries came together to race over rowing’s favourite spots – Lucerne, Switzerland, FISA, World Rowing, writes in a press release (here slightly rewritten by HTBS).

This was one of rowing’s biggest European Championships with nearly 600 competitors spread across 36 countries.

At the end of three days of racing, Germany came out on top of the medals table. The Germans picked up medals in five boat classes including defending their title in the men’s eight and winning the men’s single sculls. The women’s double sculls also went Germany’s way along with the women’s quadruple sculls and lightweight men’s double sculls. This equalled to five gold medals, one silver and one bronze.

Oliver Zeidler of Germany had a huge job in winning the single. Zeidler is one of the younger members of the elite rowing community and he got the better of Stef Broenink of the Netherlands and Pilip Pavukou of Belarus to win the single sculls. The speed of the ‘youngsters’ in this race saw two Olympic medallists Ondřej Synek of the Czech Republic and Damir Martin of Croatia finish out of the medals.

In the women’s single sculls it was the local hero Jeannine Gmelin who was the favourite. However, it was the reigning World Champion Sanita Puspure of Ireland who was moving the quickest. At the half-way point, Puspure was still in the lead followed by Fie Udby Erichsen of Denmark. Third place was fought out by Magdalena Lobnig of Austria and Gmelin. Then suddenly, the 2012 Olympic Champion Mirka Topinkova Knapkova came flying. Puspure won with a new European Best Time of 7:23.18. Gmelin grabbed second and Knapkova took the bronze medal.

A number of new European Best Times were broken in the near-perfect conditions at the regatta venue, the Rotsee. This included the women’s four with the Netherlands setting the new standard. They did this in a close race with Romania and Poland. The Netherlands finished second on the medals table with seven medals, two of them gold.

Italy, which came third on the medals table, got one of their two gold medals when Federica Cearini won in the lightweight women’s single sculls. Cearini had a great race to not only win, but also set a new European Best Time. She beat both Leonie Pieper of Germany and Marieke Keijser of the Netherlands to take the European Champion title.

Overall, medals were won by 17 nations.

The European Rowing Championships comprises of the 46 European national rowing federations, plus Israel. This year’s championship included 17 boat classes, 14 of them Olympic boat classes.

The 2020 European Rowing Championships will be held in June 2020 in Poznan, Poland.

Race results, race reports, photos and videos are available on www.worldrowing.com.