3rd place for eight rowing on Rotsea | sports

07/07/2023, 15:19

| Reading time: 2 minutes

Germany’s eighth World Cup final in Lucerne began with an encouraging sense of accomplishment. At the start of the traditional regatta in the Rotsee, where for the first time this season almost the entire world elite is at the start, the German Rowing Association (DRV) showboat had to settle for third place in the preliminary heat.

In order to save energy for Saturday’s replay, the crew around batsman Matthijs Schönherr (Potsdam) slowed down a duel with the currently dominant Briton in the second half of the tournament. “We can do it a little bit better. We want to go even higher,” commented Sabine Chagg, coach of Tomorrow’s Eights.

The big gap to the winning and currently dominant boat from Great Britain was about eight seconds at the end. Even the second from Holland was more than six seconds faster. Helmsman Jonas Wiesen (Treis-Karden) announced further resistance for the replay: “We will do our best to qualify for the final and have a chance to do even better.”

Zeidler criticizes the new format

Single driver Oliver Zeidler, considered one of the favorites after his recent victories at Varese and Henley, also got off to a less than perfect start in the three-day regatta. The German individual champion from Munich had a hard time with the organizers’ decision to forgo classic heats with board-to-board battles in several boat classes for testing reasons and instead hold so-called time trials. In this format, the rowers start taking turns at fixed intervals and fight alone against the clock.

“It’s a bullshit formula because it doesn’t increase the attractiveness of rowing,” the 26-year-old complained. “I was very lucky today because I missed the elimination by only 0.7 seconds.” Like Zeidler, Alexandra also co-stars Foster (Michedeh) heading straight into the quarter-finals, which will be held in normal mode again. All other German boat starts in 14 Olympic classes are required to go to a repechage.