Rowing FISA World Championships 2022

[Jinzha 702]

We won, we have the most silvers!

[Rafa Maciel 1,594]

This week’s World Championships definitely represents a big step forward for Team GB compared to the last few years and the disastrous Tokyo regatta. Given our relative strength in the sport, I was surprised to discover that this is the first time since 2016 that GB have won a gold medal at the rowing world championships outside of the para-rowing classes.

 

Using this week to project Olympic qualification, Britain would have qualified in all 11 of the boat categories that they entered – an improvement of 2 compared to the WCs of 2019.

 

The biggest step forward arguably came from Ukraine who would qualify 5 boats – compared to 0 in 2019 – which is no mean feat given everything that is going on in the country.

 

New Zealand and Italy haven’t had a vintage year with New Zealand qualifying in just 4 events compared to 9 previously and Italy dropping from 8 to 4.

 

Good to see Japan making progress post Tokyo. Ryuta Arakawa’s victory in the B-Final would be an Olympic qualifying spot and would possibly be the first time that a non-Chinese boat had qualified through the World Championships route.

 

 

Still a year to go before the qualification regatta, but I think Team GB will be very happy with their performances this year and if they can get a good winter of injury free training, they could be on track for largest rowing squad since London 2012.

[Dennis 712]

What a fitting end to these championships: another silver medal, making it the 7th silver medal in a Olympic class event these championships. 

 

So, in 10 finals: 1x gold, 7x silver, 1x bronze and 1x 4th place 

[Nickyc707 382]

52 minutes ago, Rafa Maciel said:

This week’s World Championships definitely represents a big step forward for Team GB compared to the last few years and the disastrous Tokyo regatta. Given our relative strength in the sport, I was surprised to discover that this is the first time since 2016 that GB have won a gold medal at the rowing world championships outside of the para-rowing classes.

 

Using this week to project Olympic qualification, Britain would have qualified in all 11 of the boat categories that they entered – an improvement of 2 compared to the WCs of 2019.

 

The biggest step forward arguably came from Ukraine who would qualify 5 boats – compared to 0 in 2019 – which is no mean feat given everything that is going on in the country.

 

New Zealand and Italy haven’t had a vintage year with New Zealand qualifying in just 4 events compared to 9 previously and Italy dropping from 8 to 4.

 

Good to see Japan making progress post Tokyo. Ryuta Arakawa’s victory in the B-Final would be an Olympic qualifying spot and would possibly be the first time that a non-Chinese boat had qualified through the World Championships route.

 

 

Still a year to go before the qualification regatta, but I think Team GB will be very happy with their performances this year and if they can get a good winter of injury free training, they could be on track for largest rowing squad since London 2012.

We need a bit of perspective here. At the "disastrous Tokyo regatta" GB had nine top four finishes in the fourteen Olympic classes compared with eight top three finishes this year. The truth is there is often only a small gap between what is regarded as success and failure. GB's performance was disappointing last year but not the disaster it has been painted in some quarters and congratulations to them for turning things around so quickly.

 

Congratulations too to the Netherlands on a series of great performances across a range of boats. Also pleased to see a resurgence in Romanian rowing with the promise of more to come after they topped the medal table at this month's European U23 championships. Great performances too from Ireland who are improving and growing and Ukraine given the circumstances in which they have had to prepare and perform.

 

Disappointing from Australia - no golds, when did that last happen - New Zealand, the US and Canada. How much of this is down to lost competition after Covid? And finally Germany with an outstanding men's sculler and then pretty much nothing. No German men's eight in the A final 🙄. What has happened to German rowing?

 

Overall an interesting regatta with some great racing. The next two years are going to be fascinating.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Nickyc707

[phelps 7,677]

Final Medal Table (Olympic events only)
 

 4 / 1 / 3
 3 / 0 / 0
 1 / 7 / 1
 1 / 1 / 0
 1 / 0 / 2
 1 / 0 / 0
 1 / 0 / 0
 1 / 0 / 0
 1 / 0 / 0
 0 / 2 / 0
 0 / 1 / 4
 0 / 1 / 1
 0 / 1 / 1
 0 / 0 / 1
 0 / 0 / 1

[Nickyc707 382]

And in the Paralympic events

 

  2 / 0 / 2

  1 / 1 / 2

  1 / 0 / 1

  1 / 0 / 0

  0 / 1 / 0

  0 / 1 / 0

  0 / 1 / 0

  0 / 1 / 0

 

 

 

[Rafa Maciel 1,594]

45 minutes ago, Nickyc707 said:

We need a bit of perspective here. At the "disastrous Tokyo regatta" GB had nine top four finishes in the fourteen Olympic classes compared with eight top three finishes this year. The truth is there is often only a small gap between what is regarded as success and failure. GB's performance was disappointing last year but not the disaster it has been painted in some quarters and congratulations to them for turning things around so quickly.

You are right that many of the boats were unlucky - none more so than the Lightweight Double who missed the bronze by 1/100th of a second - but the reason many regard it as a disaster is as much to do with what was happening off the water as it was to do with the results.

 

It was clearly not a happy, cohesive team going into Tokyo. We had struggled throughout the Olympic cycle, eventually qualified the smallest number of boats for at least 20 years, the head coach unexpectedly quit, there were suggestions of bullying within the team and then there was the whole 'smug' row after the men's four. 

 

Unfortunately success in British sport is, in many ways, measured purely in terms of the number of gold medals won, and a silver, a bronze and a hatful of unlucky fourth places isn't much of a return on a 25mln pound investment. 

[Nickyc707 382]

15 minutes ago, Rafa Maciel said:

You are right that many of the boats were unlucky - none more so than the Lightweight Double who missed the bronze by 1/100th of a second - but the reason many regard it as a disaster is as much to do with what was happening off the water as it was to do with the results.

 

It was clearly not a happy, cohesive team going into Tokyo. We had struggled throughout the Olympic cycle, eventually qualified the smallest number of boats for at least 20 years, the head coach unexpectedly quit, there were suggestions of bullying within the team and then there was the whole 'smug' row after the men's four. 

 

Unfortunately success in British sport is, in many ways, measured purely in terms of the number of gold medals won, and a silver, a bronze and a hatful of unlucky fourth places isn't much of a return on a 25mln pound investment. 

Which is precisely why perspective rather than hysteria is needed.

[OlympicIRL 5,532]

I've done an appraisal of the Irish performance here at this year's Rowing World Championships and it has been a hugely successful championships for our team.

 

Overall picture:

 

1 gold and 2 bronze in Olympic class events

4 A-Finals in Olympic class events

 

If we were to project forward 12 months, 5 boats would qualify to Paris 2024 if they replicate these results at the next World Championships while the men's four and men's double sculls finish just one and two places outside of the qualifying spots respectively.

 

On evidence of this World Championships, if all these crews continue to progress, they all have a decent chance of making it to Paris 2024. The 2 crews who were furthest away from what would be a qualifying spot, the men's and women's single sculls, are both 20 years-old and making their senior championship debuts so there is still hope we can make sufficient progress in the next 12-18 months.

 

I can't wait to see what the men's four do over the next season, 8th place on their senior debut was a phenomenal result for this young crew. I am hoping they can make it into the qualifying spots at next year's worlds.

 

 

 

 

Event	Athlete(s)	Final	Place in Final	Overall Rank
Men's Lightweight Double Sculls	Paul O'Donovan (28)  Fintan McCarthy (25)	A	1st	1st   Top 7 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Women's Lightweight Double Sculls	Margaret Cremen (23)  Aoife Casey (23)	A	3rd	3rd   Top 7 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Women's Double Sculls	Zoe Hyde (25)  Sanita Puspure (40)	A	3rd	3rd   Top 11 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Women's Four	Emily Hegarty (24)  Fiona Murtagh (27)  Eimear Lambe (25)  Aifric Keogh (30)	A	6th	6th   Top 7 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Women's Pair	Tara Hanlon (24)  Natalie Long (32)	B	2nd	8th   Top 11 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Men's Four	John Kearney (21)  Ross Corrigan (23)  Nathan Timoney (22)  Jack Dorney (21)	B	2nd	8th   Top 7 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Men's Double Sculls	Philip Doyle (30)  Konan Pazzaia (21)	C	1st	13th   Top 11 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Men's Single Sculls	Brian Colsh (20)	C	3rd	15th   Top 9 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024
Women's Single Sculls	Alison Bergin (20)	C	5th	17th   Top 9 next year Worlds qualify for Paris 2024

 

[Makedonas 2,155]

What an incredible regatta for the Dutch, wow! It's impressive how well they do when in U19 and U23 events they are rather average. Definitely they have a good system, the opposite of ours where we do so well at the U19 and U23 levels and not so well after that...

 

Pretty disappointing day for us, two 6th place finishes in A Finals. So we had three A Finals here, and all finished in 6th place. For M2X and LW2X they are good results, but I was really hoping Ntouskos could get a medal.

 

Fragkou/Natsioula coming in 15th place overall in W2X (out of 17 crews), once again leading the race at 1000m, this time in the C Final, only to have a poor second half of the race especially the last 500m. I won't be too harsh on them as they are both teenagers and were in different boats all year long and only trained about 10 days together, plus Fragkou was in sweep events all year long and Natsioula recently recovered from Covid which kept her out of training.

Edited September 25, 2022 by Makedonas