By Philip O’Connor
PARIS (Reuters) -Croatia’s Valent Sinkovic celebrated his 36th birthday in style by coming from behind to win a sensational gold in the men’s pair together with his brother Martin at the Paris Olympics on Friday.
In the women’s race minutes later, the Netherlands took control from the start, opening up a big lead that they never relinquished and cruised to victory to take gold.
With the British men’s crew of Oliver Wynne-Griffith and Tom George having led for most of the race, the Croatian brothers made a late break for glory, crossing the line in a time of 6:23.66, 0.45 seconds ahead of the British.
The Swiss pair of Roman Roeoesli and Andrin Gulich took the bronze in a time of 6:24.76.
The dominance of Dutch women’s pair Ymkje Clevering and Veronique Meester in their race was never threatened as they eased to victory in 6:58.67, leaving Romania and Australia in a furious battle for second place that came down to the last few metres.
The Australians looked like they had it wrapped up, but the Romanian crew squeezed past them just before the finish line to take the silver medal by just over half a second.
“It’s such a great, great feeling. I actually kind of knew from the halfway point we were not going to give this away. It felt so strong and amazing, I really enjoyed it,” the Netherlands’ Meester said.
The men’s lightweight double sculls final followed a very similar pattern to the preceding race, as defending Olympic champions Paul O’Donovan and Fintan McCarthy from Ireland took over by the halfway point, leaving Italy and Greece to fight it out for second.
Italy had made the early running, but they weren’t allowed to build up any sort of a lead as the Irish and Greek crews kept them in check.
But a heroic final spurt saw them cross the line second, just over a tenth of a second ahead of the Greeks.
With the lightweight events featuring at the Olympics for the last time, there was redemption for the British crew of Emily Craig and Imogen Grant, who won gold in a time of 6:47.06 to make up for missing out on the podium in Tokyo, with Romania taking the silver medal and Greece the bronze.
(Reporting by Philip O’Connor; Editing by Toby Davis and Ken Ferris)
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