Rowing through rain at junior champs - Semi-finals A/B

07/08/2010 14:39 CET http://www.worldrowing.com/display/modules/news/dspNews.php?newid=324911

The 2010 World Rowing Junior Championships in Racice, Czech Republic moved on to the semifinals as these junior crews moved closer to qualifying for Sunday’s finals. Racing over 2000m through very wet conditions which was described at times as a solid wall of water, crews did a fine job to fight for their right to move on in this regatta. Junior Men’s Coxed Four (JM4+) – Semifinal Germany are the reigning World Champions of this event, but this year the German crew had taken the hard way to the semifinal by having to race the repechage. They won yesterday’s repechage and today fronted up with the strategy of being as aggressive as possible at the start. With about 40 strokes rowed Germany had the lead. But it didn’t last long as last year’s bronze medallists, Italy pushed through to the front and began their breakaway move. Meanwhile, the United States, who had practically missed the start, pulled their socks up and got their act together to move through from the back of the field. A piece at the 900m point got the US into fourth and they began to close on Italy. At the line Italy held on to first with the United States qualifying in second and in an extremely tight battle between Ukraine and Germany at the line, Ukraine got the final qualifying spot. Germany is out of the final. Switzerland came through from Thursday’s heat as the fastest boat and today they came back to the water to race in semifinal two. With that knowledge Louis Margot, Markus Kessler, Alex Pluess, Augustin Maillefer and coxswain Marco Brechbuehl of Switzerland took off in the lead and never looked back. Switzerland has never featured before in this event, but it looks like they have hit the perfect combination this year as the crew crossed the line in first and posted the fastest qualifying time for tomorrow’s final. Australia has maintained two of the athletes that took silver last year (Amies and Moore) and today they held on solidly to second throughout the race. Amies and Moore are part of a talent ID programme that is developing athletes for the 2016 Olympic Games. New Zealand came through in third to round out the qualifying boats