2015 World Rowing Cup II, Varese (Italy)

Second stop for 2015 WRC II, June 19-21, this time at lake of Varese, Italy.
They have been three sunny days of great races and performance of top rowers from 42 countries. A day-by-day chronicle follows, with photos of heats, races, medals ceremony and other moments captured on the shore of the lake.

June 21
Wonderful hot and sunny day for the great final of WRC II here at lake of Varese. Early morning  was still fresh and nice for some training. Para-rowers in particular had not enough from their Finals yesterday, so some of them decided that 8 o’clock in the morning was the right time to practice a little bit.

Great Britain leads the ranking at the end of the day, with five Golds (W2-, LW2x, M4x, M8+, LTAMix4+), one Silver and four Bronzes.
New Zealand follows with four Golds (W2-, M1x, LM4-, LW1x), and one Silver and Bronze medals. United States of America (M4-, W8+, W4-), Australia (W1x, ASM1x, TAMix2x) and France (LM2x, LM1x, LM2-) follows with three Golds.
One Gold medal to Croatia (M2x), Germany (W4x), Netherlands (M2-), Israel (ASW1x).
Hosting country Italy did not succeed to win a Gold, but was there to fight on top and gained four Silver (M2-, M4-, LM2x, LTAMix4+) and one Bronze (M2x) medals.

See Finals here.
Medals Ceremony is here.

June 20
The day was reserved for Finals F to C followed by Repechage and Semifinals.
The same day Finals of Para-Rowing were held.
As usual, athletes spent some time in the early morning to do some practice, see here.

In the Elite competition first three positions in Semifinals gave the pass for Finals. Some Repechage had some limited numbers of free places to go to Final A, so they resulted in a strong fight to accede to major race the day after.

See Semifinals and Repechage moments in the slideshow here.

Final day for Para-rowing athletes with four finals: link to Medals ceremony.

ASM1x
Erik Horrie (AUS) lead from start to the end, and there is no chance for the others to get close to him. Second is Alexey Chuvashev (RUS), third Tom Aggar (GBR).

ASW1x
The winner is Moran Samuel (ISR), followed by Birgit Skarstein (NOR) who was able to stay with Moran up to 500m, and third Claudia Santos (BRA).

TAMix2x
Great race with all six boats very close to each other, all within in a few seconds at the finish line. Gold Medal goes to Kathryn Ross and Gavin Bellis (AUS), with Josiane Lima and Michel Gomes Pessanha (BRA) second, and Stephane Tardieu and Perles Bouge (FRA) in third position.

LTAMix4+
British team dominated the race, with the other teams strongly competing to get on the podium:  Fox, Brown, Relph, Clough, James (cox) (GBR) win, with Lunghi, Aglioti, Schettino, Protopapa, DiCapua (cox) (ITA) second, and third to Lemire, Marchand, Jesel, Frappart, Joubert (cox) (FRA) one second behind.

  Daily Results 2015 06 20 (source: www.worldrowing.com)

  Start List 2015 06 21 (source: www.worldrowing.com)

June 18
Lovely sunny day at 2015 WRC II Varese, with teams and athletes working to find the perfect boat settings and pace in the water.

Organizing Committee (OC) and crew welcomed media while still working to complete the lay up of the stands and booth. OC’s director, Luigi Manzo (see photo below), met the media and together they toured the racing area. Mr. Manzo provided further information regarding the event: 1700 seats for the public; 150 volunteers support the event; 18 international officers are supported by 30 NTO (National Technical Officer); fibre optics connection throughout the whole event, from start booth to finish line, video, audio, data are transmitted in real time. Mr Manzo proudly explained that Varese is now one of the top ten racing site in the world, with lane having a positioning error of less than 2 millimeters every 2 kilometers as prescribed by the rules.

At 6.30pm the first heat of Para-rowing competition started, and closed by 7.30pm. Results of the day are reported below (source: www.worldrowing.com, timing service provided by swiss timing). See further below for a selection of images taken during the Para-rowing heats.
  2015_06_18 – Daily Results

June 17

We’re just a few hours away from start of 2015 WRC II hosted in the lake of Varese, Italy, from June 18 to 21. Weather is now fine and forecast are for sun and blue sky rather than the rain of the last couple of days.
Registrations are closed and statistics tell that 42 countries are present, with 763 athletes, a growth compared to 2014. Boats are 331, of which men 291, women 197, with 139 and 61 lightweight men and women respectively. Para-rowing athletes are 75 with 22 boats. The largest team is Italy, followed by Germany and China.

Varese is continuing to be at the heart of world rowing even this year, after hosting 2012 European Championship, 2013 World Rowing Master Regatta, 2014 World Rowing U23 Championship.

Entries by countries and event are below (source: www.worldrowing.com).
We’ll keep you updated in the next days with news, information and photos of the event!

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