European Championships Finals Day 2 Review

After an action packed finals day 1, and then a big storm delay, there were still plenty of categories left to race for the second day, and lots of medals up for grabs. Keep reading to find out what the big shocks and big results were.

The A finals started with the PR1 singles where both results went as expected with Britain's Benjamin Pritchard taking a convincing win in the men's side and Ukraine's Anna Sheremet destroying the field to take gold by nearly 40 seconds.

Up next were the eights, where the German mens 8+ set a blistering 1:20 first 500m taking a 1 second lead over the Romanians. The Romanian crew started to come back, marginally behind at the 1km mark, before storming ahead to win by over 2 seconds in what was a brilliant race. With the women up next, but this race was less close with the Romanian women storming ahead from the get go and winning the whole way down the track to take gold by 5 seconds.

In the single sculls there were always going to be 2 heavy favourites, with Lauren Henry up first in the women's, who had a relaxed start before pushing on with a massive burst at the 1K taking a calm victory. Followed by the inevitable, Ollie Ziedler beating his own European record to take a simple gold.

The last race of the day was the Mixed 8+ and the Romanians seemed set on taking all 3 golds in the eights, but the Germans were not keen on letting that happen. after 500m the Germans were out ahead by 0.2 seconds. They may have given too much too early though as by the 1k the Romanians were back up with a 1.4 second lead and then it was never in doubt pushing ahead for a calm and collected win.

Overall this meant the medal table looked as such:

With a somewhat unexpected overall win for Romania, largely helped by some very dominant sweeping winning all 3 golds in the eights and both golds in the pair. Germany did have some strong results and really showed their depth, being the only nation to take home a double digits medal tally. The British team did have some very impressive results, largely in the para categories, with both fours, and Lauren Henry in the scull also taking home Golds, but they will be disappointed by a lack of depth, and will hope to improve as they build towards world championships.