Success for Poland at University Games
Sava Lake in Belgrade, Serbia, is a popular summer beach with up to 500,000 locals a day sometimes turning up to enjoy the weather and swimming. For the last three days the swimmers have had to move aside for the 10th World University Rowing Championships.
Apart from a delay one day due to wind, the rowers enjoyed favourable water conditions and warm weather with Poland finishing up as the most successful nation.
Of the 27 nations entered, an impressive 18 countries made it through to the finals with Poland making it through to 12 of the 13 events raced.
Only two seconds separated the top three places in the men’s single. Jan Smerghetto of Italy finished first followed closely by Jakub Sobczak of Poland with Robin van Keeken of the Netherlands in third. In a similarly close race Peter Galambos of Hungary won gold in the lightweight men’s single. France’s Jeremy Azou took silver and Milos Stanojevic of Serbia finished third.
Poland continued their success by taking gold in both the women’s double and the lightweight women’s double. Magdalena Fularczyk and Natalia Madaj had a three second win over Romania in the open double with the Czech Republic, featuring top Czech single sculler, Mirka Knapkova, finishing third.
Regular national team member for Poland, Magdalena Kemnitz raced to gold in the lightweight women’s double with university partner Karolina Widun. A close finish between Switzerland and Great Britain ended up going Switzerland’s way.
Switzerland came through from the middle of the field to win gold in the lightweight men’s four. Three members of this crew, Mario Gyr, Simon Niepmann and Sylvan Zehnder were contenders to qualify for the Beijing Olympics but their bid was not successful. The Swiss gold medal was ahead of Italy in second and Poland in third.
Switzerland also took out the men’s four with a similar strategy of coming through from behind. Roland Altenburger, Nicolas Lehner, Stefan Koller and Roman Ottiger of Switzerland finished ahead of Romania in second and Great Britain in third.
The lightweight men’s double went to a nail biting photo finish. Tomasz Mrozowicz and Michal Rychlicki of Poland had the final edge by just a fraction of a second ahead of Henry Chin and Nicholas Fearnhead of Great Britain. The Italians were third.
Michal Sloma is a regular on the Polish national team in the men’s double. He paired up with fellow university student, Wiktor Chabel to win the double. Romania finished second and France took third.
Romania’s sole gold medal was won in the women’s four. Maria-Diana Bursuc, Nicoleta Albu, Adelina Cojocariu and Cristina Ilie won with an open water lead over an extremely tight finish between the Netherlands and Poland. The Dutch and Poles had been going head to head for the entire 2000m with Poland just scraping into silver ahead of the Netherlands at the line.
The Polish men’s eight wrapped up the regatta by winning their event in a swift time of 5:33. This crew comes to the University Games on the back of finishing fifth at the Beijing Olympics. Only one member of the Olympic crew was different. The Netherlands finished second and Estonia took third.
The Polish men’s pair of Piotr Hojka and Haroslaw Godek also came directly from the Beijing Olympics. Hojka and Godek finished second behind Serbia’s Goran Nedeljikovic and Milos Tomic. Regular lightweight rowers on the German national team, Ole Rueckbrodt and Felix Otto, finished third.
Michel Bonfils, of FISU, the International University Sports Federation, commented that these Games are a great opportunity of students to grow and develop as athletes. “It allows them to have the experience of international competition without the higher levels of stress of a world championship.”
Next year, rowing at the 2009 Universiade will use this same venue and organisers are expecting about 20 per cent more rowers to be competing.
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