China Returns to Top at Second Home World Championships

China has now hosted two World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals, the first ever, at Shenzhen back in 2019, and this year’s edition in Qingdao. And both times the Asian sports giant has been the dominant force, comfortably at the top of the medal table.

In Shenzhen, the host country won three golds and a silver, out of a total of four events. This year in Qingdao, it picked up four golds, three silvers and one bronze, out of 10 different disciplines. In second place was Spain, with a pair of gold medals and a bronze, and four other countries also picked up wins. With the result, China leaps up into third place on the all-time table, tied with the USA with eight golds, but behind on the number of other medals. (And both are still five golds behind Spain.)

Looking purely at the Olympic events—the senior solos and mixed double—the overall result might be considered a technical tie between Australia and China. Isabella Scammell (Australia) beat Wenjie Zhu (China) in the women’s solo, but Jiayu Liu (China) beat Samuel Forbes (Australia) in the men’s, and neither country reached the podium in the mixed double.

Close behind was Germany, with Franz Werner and Sophie Leupold winning the mixed double and Moritz Wolff placing third in the men’s solo. Germany’s results also underline head coach Adrian Bretting’s plan to have his athletes race in both the solos and double, albeit in different regattas. His newly crowned world champion double is a completely different lineup to his recently crowned European champion double (Moritz and Julia Tertuente).

The top 16 finish order from the three Olympic events are also being used to rank national teams, and to select seven of the 16 countries that will be invited to compete in next year’s World Rowing Beach Sprint Series. With their results, China, Australia and Germany, in that order, became the first three countries to book their places.

Additionally, athletes that reached the podium, and compete for one of the top seven teams, get a guaranteed ticket to that competition, regardless of the selection decisions of their countries’ coaches. But of the athletes who reached the podium, three miss out in this initial qualification round because their national teams ranked further down the list. They include Poland’s mixed double of Adam Bujnowski and Dominika Baranowska and Austria’s Magdalena Lobnig, all of whom won bronze. Poland ranked eighth overall and Austria ranked 10th.

This year’s regatta will likely also be remembered for challenging weather that damaged installations at the venue in Qingdao and forced a four-day competition to be squeezed down into just two days. Stormy conditions on Sunday meant that all time trials were packed into a busy Monday schedule, and looming bad weather due to hit tomorrow moved all finals to today.

This isn’t the first time that worlds have struggled with bad weather. Two years ago in Genoa, Italy, races were rescheduled and time trials were cancelled due to the conditions, and back at Saundersfoot 2022 in Wales, the final stages of the women’s solos were cancelled entirely.

The top seven ranked countries, and initial seven 2027 world series teams, were:

1. China – 52 points
2. Australia – 46 points
3. Germany – 39 points
4. Lithuania – 34 points
5. Portugal – 26 points
6. Spain – 25 points
7. USA – 20 points

The full podiums from the 2026 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals were:

CW1x:

1. Isabella Scammell – Australia
2. Wenjie Zhu – China
3. Magdalena Lobnig – Austria

CM1x:

1. Jiayu Liu – China
2. Samuel Forbes – Australia
3. Moritz Wolff – Germany

CMix2x:

1. Franz Werner, Sophie Leupold – Germany
2. Dominykas Jancionis, Martyna Kazlauskaite – Lithuania
3. Adam Bujnowski, Dominika Baranowska – Poland

CMix4x+:

1. Malachi Anderson, Charlotte Wiley, Audrianna Boersen, Christopher Bak, Coral Marie Kasden (c) – USA
2. Juanjuan Li, Yecheng Zhao, Rukai Tan, Hongze Gao, Yizhu Guo (c) – China
3. Elizabeth Newell, Daniel Johnston, Catherine Khan, Samuel Forbes, Ryder Taylor (c) – Australia

PR3 CMix2x:

1. Marcos Delgado, Rocio Fraguela – Spain
2. Valdeni da Silva Junior, Joice Emily Silva – Brazil
3. Justin Stevens, Annabelle Miller – USA

U19 CW1x:

1. Weiwei Zhu – China
2. Maddison McLaughlin – Australia
3. Magdalena Vlastnikova – Czechia

U19 CM1x:

1. Xavier Torres – Spain
2. Iason Mouselimis – Greece
3. Boren Bu – China

U19 CW2x:

1. Emma Nicholson, Lexi Gill – Great Britain
2. Lele Li, Jiale Gong – China
3. Lilya Bouchikhi, Lina Hofland – France

U19 CM2x:

1. Xu Zhao, Zihao Yuan – China
2. Pierre Ibarburu, Mael Khaloua – France
3. Yasseen Elkomaty, Ibrahim Abdellatif – Egypt

U19 CMix2x:

1. Juntao Su, Lili Liu – China
2. Jasper Weber, Anneke Johanna Ihmann – Germany
3. Alfredo Mena, Blanca Lopez – Spain