Rowing: Two golds and two bronzes lift Britain to third place

Britain finished third in the world championship medal table behind Germany and Italy, lifted yesterday by a magnificent win by the coxed four and bronzes for the women's lightweight double scullers and the men's lightweight pair. Naomi Ashcroft and Leonie Barron also won gold in the four-boat final of the women's lightweight pair.

The coxed four's coach Tim Foster has plenty of recent experience of rowing in fours, and he was relaxed enough yesterday to watch the final among the British supporters club in the stands. Christian Cormack steered Tom Stallard, Steve Trapmore, Luka Grubor and Kieran West to a thumping victory, helping themselves to their first world golds, which pleased the three Olympic champions on board no end. "We did what we told Tim to tell us to do," Stallard said. They made a push after 600 metres when the Italians were steaming ahead, then went past them 600m later. Nobody else was in the frame.

Overall, the results of the men's heavyweight crews will give the team management the right kind of headache for next season. James Cracknell and Matthew Pinsent cropped four seconds off the record for coxless pairs, and their time of 6min 14sec, aided slightly by a following wind, turns out to be the target which their coach, Jürgen Grobler, set them to reach in 2004. The duo were breathtaking in speed and power, a brutal answer to the challenge of that the Australians Drew Ginn and James Tomkins issued by winning in Lucerne two months ago. This was Pinsent's tenth world title.

The coxless four's silver medal on Saturday was 0.25sec away from gold, and their coaches will seize upon the first 500m as the item on which they must work. Steve Williams, Josh West, Toby Garbett and Rick Dunn finish like a rocket, but start like a tram.

The new young eight, formed after the coxed four's Olympians were chucked out of it, excelled to reach the final, and the double scullers Matt Wells and Ian Lawson were the first British double scullers to reach a final in ten years.

The breakthrough by the women's team was Helen Casey and Tracy Langlands' bronze in the lightweight double sculls, an Olympic class in which Britain has not medalled before. Casey described the season as "climbing the foothills"; now they are in the mountains, they expect two years in which everyone is going to step up, including the Australians (Sally Causby and Amber Halliday) who won and the Germans (Janet Raduenzel and Claudia Blasberg) who lost the world title in second.

The open women's crews were disappointing, with the double scullers Frances Houghton and Debbie Flood finishing in that most depressing of places, fourth, and the quadruple scullers (Alison Mowbray, Sarah Winckless, Katherine Grainger, Rebecca Romero) in fifth.

The men's and women's lightweight quads were fourth and fifth respectively, the lightweight eight with the veterans Peter Haining and Nick Strange on board, were fifth. The brightest stars in the men's lightweight team were Ned Kittoe and Nick English with their bronze medal in the pairs. The two Olympic class boats, the four (Ben Webb, Mark Hunter, Mike Hennessy, John Warnock) and the double scullers Tim Male and Tom Kay, rank 12th and ninth respectively.