Image Credit: World Rowing
Entries: 19
This becomes a very open event with the reigning European champions from Romania not racing in Varese. Italy’s Laura Meriano and Alice Codato took silver in Plovdiv alongside a bronze in the eight. Meriano is a former U23 world medallist and raced in the quad in 2023 and the four the year before (finishing ninth on both occasions). Last season, Codato raced in the Olympic eight that finished sixth, and Meriano placed eighth in the pair at the European Rowing Championships.
Italy has a second pair racing, featuring Samantha Premerl and Linda de Filippis. Premerl was world champion in the lightweight pair in 2022 and won bronze in the coxed four at the 2024 U23 World Rowing Championships. De Filippis was part of the eight that won European bronze in 2024 and finished sixth at the Paris Olympic Games.
Great Britain won an excellent bronze in the pair in Plovdiv, and their crew of Eleanor Brinkhoff and Megan Slabbert are racing as GBR1 in Varese. They were also part of the GBR eight that won the European title. This was a great achievement, especially for Slabbert, for whom Plovdiv was her international debut.
Racing as GBR2 is Lizzie Witt and Juliette Perry. Witt, from Imperial College, was U23 silver medallist in 2022 and makes her senior debut in Varese. Perry has been part of the senior GB team for the last couple of seasons and raced in the eight in Plovdiv as a last-minute replacement for Eve Stewart, coming away with a gold medal.
As in the men’s pair, the Netherlands has entered two powerful combinations. Racing as NED1 are Nika Vos and Linn van Aanholt. They raced in the four and eight in Plovdiv, winning gold and silver respectively. Van Aanholt raced the pair at the 2024 European Rowing Championships with Vera Sneijders, winning the B-final and in 2023 won U23 silver in the pair. Vos was in the quad in 2022 that won World Rowing Championship silver and raced the double in 2023, finishing 11th.
NED2 is Ilse Kolkman and Claire de Kok. They were also part of the silver medal-winning eight in Plovdiv. Kolkman was also in the silver medal quad from 2022 and in 2024 won bronze in the coxless four at the European Rowing Championships. De Kok won U23 bronze in the quad in 2023 and last season placed eighth in the quad at the European Rowing Championships.
Outside of the European nations, the strongest crew is likely to be the Chilean twins, Melita and Antonia Abraham. They are the only crew competing in Varese who raced as a pair at the Paris Olympics Games; their ninth place was the best ever result at the Olympics for Chilean rowers. They also competed as a lightweight double in 2016, finishing 17th at the Rio Olympic Games and were part of the coxless four that won gold at the opening World Rowing Cup of the 2023 season.
Australia will also be challenging to be the best non-European crew. They have two boats entered, AUS1 is Emmie Frederico and Paige Barr. Frederico, a graduate student from Syracuse, makes her senior debut in Varese and has an U23 gold medal to her credit from the coxed four in 2022. Barr was a member of the eight from 2022 to 2024, winning World Rowing Cup medals all three seasons as well as a World Rowing Championship bronze medal in 2023. The crew finished fourth at the Paris Olympic Games.
AUS2 is a less experienced boat, Taylor Caudle and Zara Collisson. Caudle made her international debut in Varese and graduated from both the University of Wisconsin and Oxford Brookes University (with whom she won The Island Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta). Collisson is a University of Michigan grad and is also making her senior debut in Varese after two years on the Australian U23 team, which included an U23 World Rowing Championship gold medal in the coxed four in 2023.
Sixth in the A-final at the European Rowing Championships were Czechia, Anna Santruckova and Pavlina Flamikova. They both raced in Paris, Santruckova finishing eighth in the double and Flamikova tenth in the pair with Radka Novotnikova. This duo raced together during the 2021 World Rowing Cup series, winning silver at the opening fixture.
Another established pairing is Croatia, twins Josipa and Ivana Jurkovic (as an aside, Croatia has three boats racing in Varese and all three are made up of siblings). The Jurkovic twins didn’t race in Plovdiv but were bronze medallists at the 2024 European Rowing Championships and also have World Rowing Cup medals from 2021 and 2023. They won the U23 women’s pair title in 2021.
China’s pairing of Hairong Zhang and Shuxian Zhang are two of the more experienced members of an otherwise very young and inexperienced Chinese team. Shuxian Zhang was in the four that made the A-final in Paris and finished sixth at the 2023 World Rowing Championships. Hairong Zhang rowed in the eight that missed Olympic qualification at the Final Olympic and Paralympic Qualification Regatta and was seventh in 2023.
Switzerland’s Lisa Loetscher and Celia Dupre have been racing together since their days on the U23 team in 2021, including taking U23 World Rowing Championship gold in the quad that year. However, their entire racing careers have been in sculling boats, winning World Rowing Cup medals in the quad in 2022, 2023 and 2024 and just missing out on a medal at the Paris Olympic Games. It is going to be interesting to see how these scullers get on swapping two blades for one, and they are only the second Swiss women’s sweep boat to ever race at a World Rowing event (the first being a pair at the 2008 European Rowing Championships – and that crew won bronze).
The final crew to mention are the USA. They have two senior international debutants, Holly Drapp from the University of Washington, and Kaitlyn Kynast from Stanford. Kynast won bronze in the U23 coxless four back in 2019, and Drapp placed fifth in the coxed four in 2021.
Prediction
This could be really tight, but I am picking ITA1 to take gold ahead of NED1 and GBR1, who will just hold off Chile for bronze.
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