After three thrilling days of competition, the 2024 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals ended on Sunday with medals awarded in four senior and five junior events. The USA toppeds medal table with three gold medals, ahead of Great Britain with two.
The three events slated to be included at the Los Angeles 2028 Olympic Games attracted stellar entries from experienced coastal and flat-water rowers alike. On Saturday, Lithuania took their first-ever world beach sprints medal as Dominykas Jancionis and Martyna Kazlauskaite won gold ahead of Italy’s Silvia Tripi and Federico Ceccarino in the coastal mixed double sculls.
On Sunday, 2022 coastal men’s solo champion Christopher Bak of the USA found himself in a final against the 2019 and 2023 champion, Adrian Miramon Quiroga of Spain. Bak had a bit more power into the finish to regain the title. Meanwhile, after two previous fourth places, Lithuania’s Zygimantas Galisanskis won bronze
The coastal women’s solo last eight raced in increasingly big waves, but showed lots of skill to handle them. Magdalena Lobnig won a historic first-ever World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals medal for Austria, a week after picking up women’s double sculls gold at the 2024 World Rowing Coastal Championships, to end her season on a high. Clare Jamison won silver for Great Britain and five-time Olympian Emma Twigg (New Zealand) bronze.
The senior athletes also competed in the coastal mixed quadruple sculls. After a series of exciting, close races, Great Britain claimed gold by defeating the Netherlands in the final. Both crews included Olympians and athletes who had represented their country on flat water. France won bronze.
The next generation of beach sprint stars was well represented. China’s Yang Yuqi won his nation’s first junior beach sprints medal by taking the coastal under-19 men’s solo title. Annalise Hahl of the USA ended her junior career by adding coastal under-19 women’s solo gold to the solo silver and doubles bronze she had won in 2023 and 2022.
Spain won gold, silver, and bronze in the under-19 men’s, mixed, and women’s double sculls respectively, with Great Britain claiming gold in the mixed event. Ukraine’s under-19 women’s double sculls bronze was their first beach sprints medal.
The event also saw the successful running of the PR3 coastal mixed double sculls inclusion event for a second year in a row. Entries doubled to eight from four in 2023, and attracted athletes who have previously competed at both the Paralympic and Olympic Games. Great Britain won the PR3 CMix2, with the USA second.
The final of the coastal men’s solo came down to a race between the 2019 and 2023 champion, Spain’s Adrian Miramon Quiroga, and the 2022 champion Christopher Bak of the USA. Miramon had already defeated the 2023 silver medallist and 2021 champion Giovanni Ficarra of Italy in the quarterfinals. Bak had a bad start, but regained the lost ground and had more in the tank to make a perfect exit from the boat and take gold. Miramon won silver. Last year Lithuania’s Zygimantas Galisanskis lost the B-final to German Karl Schulze. This year, he faced Germany’s Franz Werner in the race for bronze, and made no mistakes to take his first medal on the third time of asking.
Result: USA, ESP, LTU
Bak said: “I have to give testament to Adrian. He’s been huge motivation for me, he’s a great, great competitor. He’s been my honestly number one motivation through every training session, every race, so I just want to say thank you to Adrian.”
Miramon said: “I am very happy. I am a phoenix, I never die. All people think I die, but I don’t die. Here, all people think no final – don’t worry. We have a final. In the last metres I don’t have more petrol in my body.”
Galisanskis said: “It’s my third bronze medal final in the world championship, and it’s the first time I win this. Two times before I was fourth. The most important for me was not to come fourth again. I wanted to win the semifinal, because it’s a very hard barrier to pass, but big waves and some mistakes, and I’m in the B-final.”
For race reports, results and photos go to www.worldrowing.com
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