Women’s Lightweight Double Scull shines on day two in Lucerne

By Rupert Guinness with the Australian Rowing Team in Europe

The Australian Women’s Lightweight Scull of Anneka Reardon and Georgia Miansarow vindicated Rowing Australia’s decision to enter them in the Final Olympic Qualifying Regatta (FOQR) by winning their repechage on Monday to book a place in Tuesday’s A-Final.

The Women’s Lightweight Double’s run into the final on the second day at the Rotsee in Lucerne, Switzerland, means Australia will have three boats in the A-Finals. Those races will determine which nations book the remaining spots in the Olympics; all crews need a top two in the A-Finals to qualify their boat.

Australia has already qualified in nine of 14 Olympic boat classes, but the Australian Rowing team (ART) came to Lucerne to try to qualify four more boats; the Women’s Lightweight Double Scull and the Men’s Quad Scull, the Men’s Double Scull and the Men’s Single Scull.

Australia will have three boats in action on the final, telling day. With the Women’s Lightweight Double Scull, they are the Men’s Quad Scull of Caleb Antill, Jack Cleary, Campbell Watts and Alex Rossi, which qualified directly by winning their heat on Sunday, and the Men’s Double Scull of David Bartholot and Marcus Della Marta, who finished third in the semi-finals on Monday.

Missing out was the Men’s Single Scull of former lightweight rower Oscar McGuinness. His fourth place in his Quarter Final put the A-Final out of reach.

The race of the day for Australia, though, was the Women’s Lightweight Double Scull repechage in which Reardon and Miansarow led from the start to win in 7:09.77s.

They beat Switzerland (7:09.98), as well as the 2021 Olympic champions Italy (7:10.93) and Spain (7:20.23), who still all made the A-Final with Monday’s heat winners, France and Greece.

The Australians, who initially were not selected for the FOQR but earned a ticket to the FOQR from RA with an impressive fourth at World Cup I in Varese, Italy in April, rowed superbly on Monday. Their victory was laced with efficient, cohesive sculling and a mix of gritty determination to prove they deserved the opportunity to try to make the Olympics.

Miansarow said the duo’s plan for the repechage was to “have an aggressive start, get into a good rhythm”. And that is what they did to set themselves up to take control of the race.

“We wanted to drive our rhythm a bit better and really push through in that second [500m] so we are in a better position going into the back half of the race,” Reardon said.

It was good they did that on Monday, as the fast-finishing Swiss challenged for the win.

“We were in a good position in that last 750m, sitting quite comfortable; but I saw out of the corner of my eye the Swiss Double make a move to try to come through,” Reardon said.

“So, we had to pop it up a couple of points to make sure we hung on to that first place.”

In other races for Australia:

The Men’s Double Scull of David Bartholot and Marcus Della Marta secured the third place in their A/B-Semi-Final they needed to make the A-Final. Won by the United States (6:16.78) from Moldavia (6:19.20), Australia (6:20.56) fended off Belgium (6:21.24) to secure the spot.

In the Men’s Single Scull, Oscar McGuinness put up a gutsy fight to place fourth in Monday’s Quarter Finals. Needing a top three place to make the A-Semi Final, he pushed into third place after 1250m, but was then edged out by Hungary in the last 250m of the race won by Romania (6:53.58) from Poland (6:57.18) and Hungary (7:00.00).

McGuinness’ fourth (7:01.41) relegated him to the C-Semi-finals, in which he won to make Tuesday’s C-Final. 

WHAT’S UP NEXT FOR AUSTRALIA - Day 3: Tuesday

9.18AM (5.18PM AEST) – Men’s Single Scull C-Final: Oscar McGuinness.

Lanes 1-6: UKR, TUR, AUS, ESP, CZE, IRQ

11.20AM (7.20PM AEST) – Women’s Lightweight Double Scull A-Final: Anneka Reardon, Georgia Miansarow.

Lanes 1-6 :  ESP, SUI, GRE, FRA, AUS, ITA

12.01AM (8.01PM AEST) – Men’s Double Scull A-Final: David Bartholot, Marcus Della Marta.

Lanes 1-6:  AUS, MDA, USA, SRB, GRE, SWE

12.31Pm (8.31PM AEST) - Men’s Quad Scull A-Final: Caleb Antill, Jack Cleary, Campbell Watts, Alex Rossi.

Lanes 1-6 : FRA, USA, AUS, NOR, EST, UKR

Here is how to follow the event on mobile, tablet, or desktop:

1. The time table for the events can be found here, and entries for all the races are available here.
2. Live race tracker and LIVE audio will be available for ALL races on www.worldrowing.com.
3. LIVE video streaming will be available on the World Rowing website from 10:00 CET on May 21 for all the A-Final races. The video streaming will start 5 minutes before the first race, and will be commentated by RA CEO Sarah Cook with guest Gevvie Stone.