2007 World IRC Report
The 26th World Indoor Rowing Championship took place on February 25th in Boston and the British team flew back across the Atlantic with seven golds, four silvers and three bronzes to declare.
Tracey Axten, Anna Bailey and Mavis Surridge all retained their title from last year in winning the Women’s 40-44 Hwt, 55-59 Hwt and 75-79 Lwt events respectively. Special mention must go to Tracey Axten, who keeps on rolling back the years, winning this year in 6:56.5, over two seconds quicker than her time from last year. Christina Nugent Lee’s return to the indoor rowing scene continued to reap rewards as she won the 40-49 Lwt race in a time of 7:29.5.
Holding up the men’s side of things, Brian Bailey, one of the nicest men on the circuit, just failed to beat his own 60-64 Lwt World record, winning in a time of 6:50.9, while Roy Brook added the World title to his European crown in winning the Men’s 55-59 Lwt in 6:43.1. Boston seems to bring the best out of Nik Fleming, and he was involved in yet another great race in the Men’s 30-39 Hwt event. Racing against former Boat Race athlete Toby Ayer, current US international Sloan Duross and South Africa’s Pieter Engelbrecht, Fleming ground out a fantastic win, just holding off the last two in a thrilling and noisy final 500m.
The race of the day for most indoor rowing aficionados was the Men’s Open Lwt race. This featured an incredibly intriguing field. As well as four-time World champion Filippo Mannucci from Italy, there was a troika of Danes. There was Mads Rasmussen, lightweight double World Champion and who was hoping to go around 6:05 and Esklid Ebbesen, the 30-39 Lwt world record holder, holder of eight Olympic and world gold medals and, most impressively, runner-up in the Danish version of Strictly Come Dancing. The one who was attracting most of the pre-race betting, however, was Henrik Stephansen, “the phenom”. Still only 18, Stephansen was also hoping to take the occasion to break his own J18 world record. At the start, Stephansen went off at a fearful rate, hitting 69 spm and not dropping below 50 spm for at least the first 150m. In fact, so powerful was his start, that his machine bucked forward across the race arena and he would have ended up in the crowd if it weren’t for the intervention of the Danish manager. At 500 metres, Stephansen had his nose in front and all the experience and gold medals of his rivals were not able to bridge the gap, despite a phenomenal last 400 metres by Mads Rasmussen that was rowed at sub-1:30 pace. Stephansen won in 6:06.6, just a tenth outside his world record, while Manucci split Rasmussen and Ebbesen to take the bronze, Rasmussen’s silver coming in 6:07.6 and Manucci’s bronze in 6:09.4.
If you want to see what a future legend of the sport looks like, go to http://www.quistmedia.dk/roklub/crash-b07/crash-b_sprints_2007.html which features all of Stephansen’s race.
Juliane Elander made it a Danish double in the Open Lwt events, winning her first World Open Lwt gold in a time of 7:06.9 after taking bronze and silver in the previous two years. Behind her Katrien Hautvast of the Netherlands was just able to hold off America’s Gretchen Horner-Wright by nine-tenths of a second to take the silver in 7:09.0.
In the Women’s Open Hwt, Canada’s Anna-Marie Dezwager had a relatively easy time in winning gold in a time of 6:43.9, meaning that another Open class silver went back to Holland as Jenny Van Dobben De Bruin came second in 6:49.3, with Jenny Barnes of the US rounding out the medal places with 6:51.3.
The Men’s Open race saw the return of Mark Flickinger and Wyatt Allen from the US National Squad, who finished second and fourth last year respectively. Lined up against them were Anton Grassl, the European champion from Slovakia, Allar Raja from Estonia and Matt Hughes, also from the US National Squad. In a close race, Flickinger was always just that little to quick for Allen and a fast finish meant he won by just over a second in 5:46.6. Allen was second in 5:47.5, while international canoeist Grassl finished third in 5:52.8.
For full results go to http://www.concept2.co.uk/wirc/results.php, Photographs can be found at http://www.concept2.co.uk/wirc/photographs_2007.php while short videos for each race are at http://www.concept2.co.uk/wirc/video.php.
