NAILSWORTH'S Pete Reed and the Great Britain men’s eight brought the curtain down in style to win the men’s eight gold medal by just eight hundredths of a second from their big rivals and Olympic champions, Germany.

Reed, Matt Gotrel, Constantine Louloudis, Paul Bennett, Mohamed Sbihi, Alex Gregory, George Nash, Will Satch and cox Phelan Hill worked themselves into a good lead early in the race before Germany mounted a charge which brought them back bow-ball to bow-ball with the British crew.

An immense effort in the final ten strokes kept the challenge at bay and gave GB, the World Champions, the gold in 5:33.95. New Zealand were third.

Earlier European Champions James Foad and Matt Langridge marked their return to world cup action after an injury pause with a barnstorming second half to take silver in the men’s pair behind the New Zealand Olympic Champions.

Foad said: James Foad: “We have to take confidence from that. We were nine seconds behind New Zealand this time last year but we are closing the gap and there is still more to come from us”.

Sandwiched between the men’s medals came a well-fought bronze for the GB women’s eight who took the race to the World silver medallists and eventual winners, Canada, from the start before being pipped by beaten to silver by the New Zealanders.

The afternoon medals followed gold from the women’s pair and bronze from the open men’s single scull in the morning’s session.

“We have had five strong medals today and two outstanding golds from our women’s pair and men’s eight. We didn’t get everything right here but we will go away to our pre-Worlds camps next week with confidence in what we’ve achieved and some good learnings for those Championships”, said Sir David Tanner, GB RowingTeam Performance Director.

Earlier today Helen Glover and Heather Stanning had given themselves the best possible platform for their World Championships preparation by winning that world cup women’s pair gold.

The Olympic, World and European Champions moved out to a 27-race winning streak by holding off a strong New Zealand pair, Grace Prendergast and Kerri Gowler. The GB duo moved out to a big early lead and then sustained the pressure to win in 6:57.59. Denmark took the bronze.

Glover said: I felt like we were in control through all of it. In some sense, I guess, we expected a bit more of a race from them”.

Stanning added: “That was really pleasing because Helen called the race perfectly. We saw New Zealand put in a push but Helen said ‘stay there’. We had the stimulus outside the boat but we felt contained within it.

"We knew we were going to attack it because it was the last chance to put down a marker before the World Championships.

A year ago Lucerne was the scene for one of Alan Campbell’s worse regattas which resulted in him missing out on the 2014 World Championships. Today the London 2012 bronze medallist showed his continuing return to form by winning a plucky bronze in the open men’s single scull in a race won by Mahe Drysdale of New Zealand.

Campbell said: “To come back from last year like that, to go from 14th to bronze and being back on the podium – it feels like a gold-medal performance to me”.

Olympic Champion Kat Copeland, racing this season with Charlotte Taylor, did not have such a good day. They finished fourth in the lightweight women’s double scull won by New Zealand with South Africa in silver Holding third until the final 300m, the GB boat was pipped by the USA for bronze.

Jonny Walton and John Collins were fifth in the double scull final as were the women’s quadruple scull in their final.