Triumph and Tenacity in Trakai

South Africa’s U19 rowing squad has just completed a successful Junior World Championships in Trakai, Lithuania.

The standard of rowing was extremely high, with all the major rowing nations represented.

The top-performing South African crew was the Junior Women’s Pair of Amber Potgieter and Anouk van der Breggen who were able to qualify for their A Final, in which they came sixth. The Junior Men’s Pair of Warrick Kyriazis and Matthew Jasson, and the Junior Women’s Double of Krissy Xavier and Jade Burnand did well to qualify for their B Finals, in which both crews came fourth, putting them into the top ten crews in the world in their discipline. 

The Junior Men’s Quad made the D Final, as did the Junior Men’s Double. The Double, crewed by the identical van der Vyver twins, Matthew and Nicholas, still only 16, won their Final. They will be back in the years to come to improve on this performance.

The most exciting race of the regatta for the South African crews was that of the Junior Men’s Coxless Four. Before the race, the stroke of the boat, Obinna Nnamani, spoke of how inspired he has been by the gold medal won by the Men’s Lightweight Four in the London Olympics in 2012, a race that was stroked to perfection by Sizwe Ndlovu, who timed their sprint to the finish immaculately as they came through from fourth place to take gold.

In their C Final, Obinna and his crewmates (Liam Batley, George Cronje and Matthew de Vos) were able to recreate something of the magic of that race. Trailing Canada for almost the entire race, they surged in the final 200m to win by a mere 0.02s. Canada had led for 99.995% of the race, but the South African crew got ahead when it counted.

Overall Results:

Womens Pair: Potgieter & van der Greggen 6^th

Womens Double: Burnand & Xavier 10^th

Mens Pair: Kyriazis & Jasson 10^th

Mens Double: van der Vyver & van der Vyver 13^th

Mens Four: Nnamani, de Vos, Cronje & Batley 13^th

Mens Quad: Moeller, Tayler, Du Toit & Sheasby 21^st

For more information, visit rowsa.co.za or follow @rowingrsa/@rmbnationalsquad on social media.