Junior Men’s Pair (JM2-) Vasileios Ntalamagkas, 17, and Apostolos Lampridis, 16, of Greece are racing for the first time on the junior national team. After winning their semifinal they were looking confident for today’s final. And confident they were. Ntalamagkas and Lampridis jumped off the line in first taking a slight edge on the rest of the field. The remaining five boats meanwhile were all on top of one another. Germany had a very slight edge over Slovenia, while Australia and the United States were neck-and-neck with France also in the picture.
Going through the middle of the race the United States had closed on the Greeks with France and Slovenia slipping back off the pace. Then Germany (Frederik Prigge and Lukas Oberhausen) and Australia began to move. Of these six boats Germany is the only boat that was in the Final last year and they wanted to show what they had. Australia overtook Germany briefly, but Germany would fight back.
At the line Ntalamagkas and Lampridis become junior World Champions, Prigge and Oberhausen take silver by passing Australia’s Ryan Edwards and Matthew Dignan two strokes before the line. The Greeks came prepared for the medal ceremony. Taking a flag out of their boat, they carried it to the podium.
Results: GRE, GER, AUS, USA, FRA, SLO
Gold: Apostolos LAMPRIDIS (GRE)
“Very good, absolutely crazy and fantastic. It was long and hard training to reach this place.”
Silver: Frederik PRIGGE, Lukas OBERHAUSEN (GER)
“Amazingly good - nothing else.”
