10 August 2022

By Göran R Buckhorn

The 2022 European Rowing Championships start tomorrow in Oberschleissheim, outside of Munich. Rowing is one of nine sports in the multi-sport “European Championships Munich 2022”. This is the second time the multi-sport European Championships are being held with 33 European countries participating. World Rowing mentions that 553 rowers will compete (while on the organiser’s website it says 660 rowers) between 11 and 14 August.

There are 23 boat classes (24 on the organiser’s website) in the rowing programme in Oberschleissheim. The largest class is the men’s single sculls. It very likely that the medal fight is going to be between the 2020 Olympic champion Stefanos Ntouskos of Greece, Olympic silver medallist Kjetil Borch of Norway and reigning European champion, Oliver Zeidler of Germany. It’s going to be interesting to see if Zeidler will have an advantage to race on his home-turf. We can also throw in Graeme Thomas of Great Britain in the mix.

In the women’s single sculls, the overall World Cup winner this year, Karolien Florijn of the Netherlands, will meet 2020 Olympic bronze medalist Magdalena Lobning of Austria and Germany’s rising sculling star Alexandra Föster, who became the World Rowing Under 23 Champion in Italy a week ago. Jeanine Gmelin of Switzerland will also be fighting to reach the medal podium.

In the para-rowing’s PR1 women’s single sculls, no one has been able to pass Norway’s Birgit Skarstein in her last 22 races. It’s likely that she will stay ahead of the rest of the field also in Oberschleissheim. In the PR1 men’s single sculls, Ukrainian Paralympic champion Roman Polianskyi will face Italian Giacomo Perini, who won the World Cup.

The races will begin tomorrow, Thursday, at 9 a.m. (CET). All four days of heats, repechages, semifinals and finals will be live streamed on www.worldrowing.com.