Grainger advances to sculls world final

aberdonian to face defending champion

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SCOTLAND’S Katherine Grainger qualified for tomorrow’s final of women’s single sculls at the world champion-ships by finishing second in her semi-final yesterday in Poznan, Poland.

Grainger’s race was led from the start by China’s Xiuyun Zhang, with local sculler Agata Gramatyka following her into second off the start. But Grainger took over second place by the 500m mark, less than a length behind Zhang.

Grainger and Zhang then kept the same positions for the rest of the race, with Russia’s Julia Levina and Serbia’s Iva Obradovic both overtaking Gramatyka by the halfway mark.

Earlier this season, Levina had beaten Grainger into fourth place at the Munich World Cup, but this time there was no way the Scot was going to let her past.

Levina eventually qualified in third behind Zhang and Grainger, but, thanks to her second place, Grainger will now have a good lane draw for the final.

In the other semi-final, which was significantly slower, pre-event favourite Mirka Knapkova from the Czech Republic won comfortably ahead of defending cham-pion Ekaterina Karsten of Belarus and third-placed Emma Twigg of New Zealand, who all qualified.

Grainger said: “There’s a lot of very experienced single scullers out there, and I fancied my chance against them, so I’m pretty pleased to knock off some of the names there and find myself in a decent position for the final.”

Asked whether it had been her best singles race, the Aberdonian said: “I have to go to my coach Paul Thompson to decide whether that’s been my best race so far, but a semi-final of a world championships? You’ve got to be at a good standard to make it through. I couldn’t have hoped for much more.”