Rowers celebrate achievements at dinner

LEANDER Club in Henley hosted its annual dinner on Saturday night.

The rowing club hosted 100 members, including 20 Leander athletes who represented Great Britain at the World Championships in Shanghai this year, with 16 of them winning medals.

Also at the dinner were eight of the Leander men’s crew who won the Ladies’ Challenge Plate at Henley Royal Regatta this year. In the summer, the crew beat Oxford Brookes University “A” by three quarters of a length.

The intermediate open eight oars with coxswain finished in a time of six minutes and seven seconds.

The guest of honour was Constantine “Stan” Louloudis. 

Louloudis, 34, took gold in the Rio 2016 Olympics in the men’s coxless four and bronze at London 2012 in the men’s eight.

He is a two-time world champion and a four-time Boat Race winner, representing Oxford University.

After dinner, president, Dick Lester thanked a number of people for their services to the club and introduced the speakers.

The club captain, Lola Anderson, 27, gave a summary of the year and its highlights and paid tribute to Louloudis.

Louloudis responded with an account of his rowing career. The Greek-British rower learned to row at Eton and in 2009 he stroked the Eton eight that won the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup at Henley, after which he joined Leander.

Mr Lester, who himself took silver at the 1976 Montreal Olympics, concluded by pointing out that Louloudis’ achievements were all before the age of 25.

He added that Louloudis was someone “who not only wins gold medals but inspires others to win gold medals”.