Bronze medal at Orta Lake Challenge 2025

How about a three day trip to Italy and the beautiful Orta lake? Enjoying good food and excellent wines against a most scenic backdrop? This year, the women’s eight, the men’s eight and a single sculler thought this was an offer too good to refuse. The pain of a good 25 minutes race seemed more than worth the rest of the trip.

On Friday October 10, over twenty Nordiska rowers and supporters met up in beautiful Orta San Giulio. The women’s team met up with Stefano, the primus motor and seven time rowing champion, to locate the boat provided by the organisers. After cleaning the boat thoroughly (are we becoming too Swiss?), changing several settings and waiting for a lost oar transport, the women set out on a training round the lake. Due to tighter schedules, the men focused on the dinner and a race prep over a four course menu. 

On the regatta day, the ladies (cox Suzanne, Teresia, Evelina, Christina, Anita, Sandra D, Sandra S, Saskia, Cecilia, Reserve: Viktoria) had the earlier start time and planned to hand over the boat to the men’s crew starting two hours later. When arriving at the race area, the ladies found out they had been assigned a different boat, so the tedious work of cleaning and adjusting, this time with some time pressure, began again.

Well on water there was time to check out the nine boat strong competition field and admire the sound effects of the Italian way of coxing an eight without a microphone. At the start, the first boat in the lineup was late, so the ladies were bumped up to lead their group. With the excellent commands of cox Suzanne, the women took off, heading for the first turn. The course, with four tight turns, requires the cox to keep tight lines between buoys as well as the crew to turn the boat fast and efficient. The ladies did a good job at it and rowed to loud cheers of the Nordiska crews and supporters, finished without having been overtaken. 

The traditional bubbles were enjoyed and the happiness of a well rowed course was loud and cheery. So loud in fact, that the ladies almost missed the commentators words about “three” and “Nordiska”. A curious crew gathered by the podium to realise, much to their own surprise, they had indeed came in third place! A very welcome surprise in an international field of experienced eights. The cox literally had to jog from the ceremony to catch the men’s crew, already sitting in the boat at the dock, ready to row. 

The men’s boat (cox Suzanne, Martin, Patrik, Antti, Jani, Thomas, Torbjörn, Sebastian, Philipp) had very limited training before the race, and despite balance issues on the way, rowed to a good fifth place of 12 boats.  The crew was happy with the time, and the traditional beer and swim afterwards was refreshing. 

Having perfected the turn technique during the ladies race before, cox Suzanne headed for even sharper turns this time. So sharp, that the team rowing just a boat-length behind our boat, coming in for the first turn, didn't keep up with her streamlined plan. This resulted in them nearly crashing into our boat, prevented only by a last minute call from the umpires. They had to do an emergency stop — and Nordiska gained 1-2 boat lengths — excellent coxing! Although some in the Nordiska boat, looking at the dramatic turn of events behind cox’s back, got a bit of a scare.

On the final stretch the crew enjoyed the cheering and support, which gave a good burst of energy for the end sprint. The men acknowledged that the previous month’s dedicated training, resulting in a medal for the ladies, clearly shows that it pays off to train, and they will be looking into more training before next year’s race.

The day ended with a loud and long Italian dinner, continuing long into the night, reportedly ending at the final stages of an Italian wedding reception, where the bride was still on the dance floor. Where the groom was, seemed to be somewhat blurry. 

On Sunday the eights crews and supporters were loudly cheering on Kristofer, who took part in a 125 boat strong single scullers race. The mass start of the race is something everyone should see once, making the Milanese traffic look like the quiet countryside. Kristofer rowed well into fourth place of eight Masters D boats, being the eighth fastest of 30 Masters participants. 

It needs to be mentioned that the oldest participant was 91 years strong, promising us Nordiska rowers many years of good dinners, fine wines - and some 25 minutes of race pain. 

Lago d’Orta - ci vediamo l'anno prossimo!