HENLEY Rowing Club came away with four gold medals, a silver and a bronze at the British Rowing Championships held at Strathclyde Park near Glasgow last weekend.
Racing was held over three days with all classes of competition rowing 2,000 metres.
The most notable win for Henley RC was by Paul Hamblett, the sole representative from the men’s senior squad, who won the gold medal in the lightweight single sculls.
After a slow start in the final he moved through the field with a push at the 1,000m mark. He then followed this up with another move at the 500m mark allowing him to win gold ahead of scullers from both London Rowing Club and Leander Club.
Events for the 14 to 16-year-old rowers were held over the first two days with the heats, repechages and semi-finals being held on Friday and the finals on Saturday with the older crews racing, in similar knockout fashion, on Saturday and Sunday.
The WJ14 girls’ quad of Ruby Cooper, Ella Seabury, Ruby Fletcher, Caitlin Sutherland and Bradley Ralph as cox, rowing in a boat loaned to them by St Edward’s School, Oxford, won Friday’s heat outright by four seconds which meant that they qualified directly for the final on Saturday afternoon.
In the final they proceeded to dominate from the early stages rowing away from City of Bristol and Eton Excelsior, who finished second and third respectively, to secure a gold medal by a winning margin of just under five seconds.
Henley’s third gold came from the WJ15 quad of Abegail Roels, Molly Thorp, Kate Tillotson, Maddie Wynn-Jones and Didi Horsburg-Wade (cox) finishing a highly successful season in style after qualifying straight into the final from their heat.
The battle against their old adversaries, Trentham, was tight until the last 500 metres when the Henley girls pulled away to finish four-and-a-half seconds ahead.
Gemma Hall, who has been selected to represent Great Britain at this year’s Coupe de la Jeunesse (effectively the Junior European Championships), won Henley’s fourth gold medal competing in a composite crew in the women’s open quads.
The girls won their heat easily and looked to be repeating this in the final when with 200m to go the three girl caught her blades in the water bringing the boat to a complete halt. The girls showed great composure to restart from the stopped position but by this time had been closed down by Sir William Borlase and they only went on to win by a third of a length.
Alice White, who has had a restricted season due to injury, won silver in the WJ14 single sculls. After a couple of weeks back in the boat she won her semi-final before going on to secure runners-up spot. The winner from Newark showed just too much speed over the opening half of the course, although White progressively closed up in the later stages.
At WJ18 level, Lizzie Blair, Jessica Gough, Charlotte Mills and Imogen Mansfield reached the finals in the WJ18 coxless quads and the WJ18 coxless fours. The girls were unable to reach the podium in coxless fours final but exceeded their expectations in the quad by securing a bronze medal.
Florence Lock and Abbie Stephens competed in the J18 girls’ double sculls. The duo progressed to the final via the repechage. In the final the girls sculled well as they held the bronze medal position for a significant part of the race but were unable to hold off the selected Welsh boat and finished in fourth place with the other two medals taken by crews involving the GB candidates.
Upper Thames Rowing Club picked up three silver medals and a bronze from the three-day event.
Top men’s sculler Will Hoodless brought back two silver medals, one from a composite double scull with Antony Smith from Tideway Scullers’ School and the second in another Upper Thames/Tideway Scullers’ School composite again with Smith and Thomas Bond and Simon Suthers.
Sam Mottram took silver in the J15 single sculls while Lucinda Gooderham, the fastest contender in Upper Thames’ women’s squad, won bronze in the elite women’s single sculls, in a time that was less than four seconds off the gold.
Published on 26 July 2010
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