The Filippi Trophy Survives Stormy Waters to Crown Its 2026 Champions

The Filippi Trophy’s International Circuit crowned its King (Germany’s Franz Werner), Queen (Austria’s Magdalena Lobnig) and Golden Couple (Lithuania’s Raminta Morkunaite and Zygimantas Galisanskis) over the weekend in Italy, based on results from the four-round beach sprint series. China was also awarded the title of best under-19 team. But set after set of dangerous waves meant getting to the finish line and those podiums would require schedule changes and re-changes, and inspire some competitors to race wearing crash helmets.

The International Circuit, which is only in its second year, has grown substantially just this season. In the first round in Mondello, back in March, participants represented a total of 12 different nations. In the last round in Marina di Castagneto, athletes from 30 countries competed, many of them directly for their national teams.

However, such rapid growth can be difficult to handle, and especially so when the weather won’t cooperate. The initial schedule for the regatta aimed to include National Circuit races on Friday. Given the number of competitors in the International Circuit, plus some concerns about the conditions through the weekend, organizers were even hoping to run some of the international time trials that day too.

But dangerous conditions scratched all racing, and some practice time, that first day, and ultimately delayed the start of the time trials from 8 a.m. to 11.30 a.m the next day. There was an early, failed attempt the run the men’s solos time trials on Saturday morning, but it was called to a halt when the first competitors, including the USA’s Chris Bak, came back in to report on how difficult the conditions were, and when Malta’s Edward Grech was unable to get out of the break water.

Faced with the challenge of getting through the international racing before competitors would fly home on Sunday, most of the national events were moved to Sunday afternoon. The standard second time trial was also cancelled, meaning the top 16 from the first time trial would go straight into quarterfinals. When competition finally started, organizers made clear to athletes and coaches that the ultimate decision to race would be that of each rower, and made available a supply of white, Filippi-branded crash helmets. (A significant number of athletes opted to wear them, including stars like Werner, Lobnig and the Italian duo Federica Cesarini and Federico Ceccarino.)

The time trials themselves threw up surprises because of how much the water changed over the course of an hour—the senior men’s solos had 64 participants, separated by one-minute intervals—. And with waves coming in sets, even from one competitor to the next there could be major differences to the difficulty level each faced. Some athletes were unlucky enough to flip, while others miraculously survived losing hold of their oars and even having both feet out of the boat. The afternoon knockout rounds were equally as challenging because of how the conditions in one lane could suddenly become much more difficult than in the other: while one boat might be able to coast to shore, the other would struggle not to veer sideways.

Favorites ended up out of sequence or even out of the race entirely. Bak, a three-time world champion in the men’s solo, set the 11th best time, and a worse time than he had set in the earlier aborted attempt to run the time trials. Morkunaite, the winner of the women’s solos in this year’s second round in Fano, was eliminated in the knockout rounds in Marina di Castagneto as the water turned sour just before she reached the beach.

On Sunday, when conditions had substantially improved, the quarterfinals, semifinals and finals could all be completed more or less on time, and without weather-related problems. But because athletes had still qualified out of their predicted slots, there were still upsets. Bak and Germany’s Moritz Wolff may have been expected to meet later on (Bak is the reigning world champion and Wolff came fourth at last year’s worlds). But in the end they faced off in the quarterfinals, with Wolff advancing to the semis.

And cresting waves in the launch zone still caused a number of competitors to fall off their seats at the start. Perhaps the cruelest example being Italy’s Silvia Messina, who reached the podium in the under-19 women’s solos in all the previous rounds, but whose footstretchers came completely out at the start of her quarterfinal against Austria’s Elena Schalk.

The podiums from the International Circuit in the Filippi Lido Trophy’s third round were:

CW1x:

1. Laura Mckenzie – Great Britain
2. Magdalena Lobnig – Austria
3. Teresa Díaz – Spain

CM1x:

1. Franz Werner – Germany
2. Lucio Fugazzotto – Fiamme Gialle (Italy)
3. Moritz Wolff – Germany

CMix2x:

1. Zygimantas Galisanskis, Raminta Morkunaite – Lithuania
2. Federica Cesarini, Federico Ceccarino – Italy
3. Afonso Costa, Patricia Batista – Portugal

PR3 CMix2x:

1. Romeo Mednis, Hill Elise – Next Level Rowing (USA)

U19 CW1x:

1. Weiwei Zhu – China
2. Carlotta Savona – Italy
3. Jagna Jurdziak – Poland

U19 CM1x:

1. Nikolas Roidmayer – Austria
2. Lukas Kasik – Czech Republic
3. Lukas Krizek – KVM 1881 (Czech Republic)

U19 CMix2x:

1. Lili Liu, Xu Zhao – China
2. Lele Li, Juntao Su – China
3. Maksymilian Maciejewski, Anna Kusmider – Poland