He may not be one of the rowers competing, but he’s certainly one of the standout figures at the World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals: Tone Wieten, one of the Dutch ‘golden boys’ who managed to win two Olympic gold medals in the quadruple sculls at Tokyo and Paris, is part of the Dutch contingent for this World Finals.

Wieten, however, is sure of one thing: his favorite memory is the gold from Paris. ‘It was truly incredible,’ he recalls. ‘In the last hundred meters, we knew we were about to win, and we just tried not to make any mistakes. It was fantastic’.

But on the shores of Genoa this weekend, the competition is for the title of Beach Sprint World Champion, a discipline full of hidden challenges. ‘It’s different from other races,’ he explains. ‘You train for the sprint, the run, the rowing, getting in and out of the boat, there are many different factors’.