Greek rowers Christina Ioanna Bourmpou and Evangelia Fragkou not only won gold for Greece but also broke a new world record at the Women’s pair finals of the U23 Womens Rowing Champions held in Italy.
Although they had only been training as a duo for a month, the girls quickly took the “upper hand” from their competitors from early on in the race and kept hat momentum until the finale with a time of 6:58.41 which is also a new world record.
Christina Ioanna Bourmpou, who was fifth in this boat class at the Tokyo Olympic Games, was racing with Evangelia Fragkou here and they were such an impressive pairing.
At 1000m, Greece had a comfortable lead with Lithuania in second and Canada in third place. Into the third quarter, the Greek crew was really starting to move away, setting a furious pace. Canada, still at 40 strokes per minute, was holding off a move from Germany. Into the final quarter, Greece looked imperious and took gold. Canada got overhauled by Germany, who also started to challenge Lithuania. It was yet another World Championship Best Time with Greece knocking 0.27 seconds off the previous time which had been set in 2019.
Lithuania took an early lead, but Canada was very high on the rating too – over 50 strokes per minute. But it was soon all about Greece.
[Source: World Rowing]
