2023 European Rowing Championships Review
M1x (Men’s single)
Germany's Olli Zeidler has to face the fact that a pattern is emerging. Nine months after flunking the Europeans test on his home water, the 2021 continental champion travelled to Bled to see if he could pull off a second gold in a less pressured environment. But again he fell short, finishing third despite having spent much of the winter practising his technique on bumpy water.
The road to the final had been a good one for most of the top scullers, only Kristian Vasilev from the 2022 field having had to work his way through the repechage after being unlucky to draw Olympic hero Stefanos Ntouskos in the first round, with one sculler per race through. Accompanying him through the second-chance races was Lennart Van Lierop, the Dutch sculler who spent last year in the NED double but has been switched directly with 2022 European champion Melvin Twellaar. It will be interesting to see whether that is changed back, but meanwhile Van Lierop had a fantastic regatta, runner-up to old-timer Sverri Nielsen in the heat, posting the second-quickest repechage victory time on day two, and sneaking into the final behind Zeidler and Ntouskos on day three. Meanwhile the top names qualified without trouble and Vasilev won a near-photofinish with Italy's