"VAN" (Sports Desk - 11.09.2026) :: The crews are set for the inaugural World Rowing Shanghai Sprints, with seven national teams and a World Team ready to go head-to-head over 500m in the heart of Shanghai on 26–27 September. Olympic and World Champions will join emerging stars in a new knockout format designed to bring elite rowing closer to fans.
With less than three weeks to go until the inaugural World Rowing Shanghai Sprints, World Rowing can now reveal the crew lineups set to race in the sport’s newest international showcase.
The eight teams – the Netherlands, Great Britain, China, Romania, Ireland, United States, Germany, and the World Team – will compete across women’s and men’s single sculls, women’s and men’s double sculls, mixed doubles and the mixed eight.
Racing will take place over a fast-paced 500m course in downtown Shanghai, with crews going head-to-head in a knockout format designed to deliver high-intensity racing and a new experience for athletes and fans.
Elite Crews, New Combinations
The Shanghai Sprints will bring together some of rowing’s biggest names, with Olympic and World Champions lining up alongside some of the sport’s rising stars.
Germany will be led by reigning men’s single sculls World and Olympic Champion
Oliver Zeidler, who will compete in both the men’s single sculls and the mixed double sculls with Alexandra Foester.
The World Team, lead by two-time World Rowing Coach of the Year Gianni Postiglione, features World and Olympic champion Stefanos Ntouskos of Greece (men’s single sculls), who will also double up in the mixed double sculls with Lithuanian Olympic medallist Viktorija Senkute. Senkute will also compete for the World Team in the women’s single sculls.
The Netherlands, who come out of the 2026 World Rowing Championships at the top of the medal table, will field a strong squad including World Championship medallists Roos de Jong, Benthe Boonstra and Finn Florijn. De Jong and Boonstra, silver medallists in the women’s double sculls, will face tough competition in that boat class from World Champions Zoe Hyde and Margaret Cremen of Ireland.
Great Britain brings a mix of established international performers and emerging talent and will field their first-ever mixed double and mixed eight in Shanghai. China, Romania, and the United States complete a field drawn from some of the world's strongest rowing nations.
The World Team | Rowing Without Borders
One of the Shanghai Sprints' unique features is the World Team, which brings together elite athletes from countries that did not qualify a complete national team.
Representing Greece, Lithuania, New Zealand, France, Serbia, Switzerland, and China, the World Team reflects rowing's global reach and creates combinations that would not normally compete together.
The team includes Ntouskos, Senkute, New Zealanders Benjamin Taylor and Oliver Welch, French rowers Emma Cornelis and Hezekia Peron, Serbian Olympians Martin Mackovic and Nikolaj Pimenov, Swiss rowers Salome Ulrich and Fabienne Schweizer, and Chinese coxswain Zhiwei Sun.
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