Henley junior quad set the pace at Wallingford Sculls

HENLEY Rowing Club’s juniors and masters both gained success at events held last Saturday and Sunday.

The club’s juniors raced at the first autumn head of the season, the Wallingford Long Distance Sculls, on Saturday.

This is one of the more challenging local heads raced over a 4,000m course with some testing bends early in the race.

Raced over three divisions, the first and third divisions being the full course and the second division being a shorter — and straighter — 2,500m. Henley had 32 single scullers and 16 crew boats out of 500 entered across the three divisions.

Henley’s junior men’s squad focused primarily on single events, with several boys competing twice.

Felix Richardson sculled with good technique to a standard above his age group to win the J15 event by 28 seconds from the second-place sculler.

In J18 event, Sam Pratt finished eight in a strong field of 64. In the J16 event Zak Jenkins was fourth in a field of 30 scullers with Viggo Gibbons ninth and Jacob Len 10th. In the J17 event Louis Bolton performed well to finish sixth out of 36 scullers.

For the girls Henley had 11 compete at the top junior category WJ18 with seven finishing in the top 10, Ailish Harkin in an commendable second place overall. In WJ17 Abbie Smith finished third and Emma Eltze fourth.

In crew boats the WJ18 quad of Tilly Macartney, Gwennie Hunter, Pippa Jamieson and Ailish Harkin won their event with the fastest women’s boat time of the day. In Division 2, which was restricted to U14 and U15 crews, the Henley WJ15 quad of Evie Meeks, Amelie McDavid, Jemima Butterworth, Martha Dickson and cox Florence French took the win ahead of crews from Sir William Borlase and Wallingford.

In WJ15 double sculls Molly Hall and Chloe Hughes finished first comfortably ahead of a crew from Thames Scullers and in a time faster than the boys’ event. On Sunday two women’s masters crews competed in the pairs head on the London Tideway raced between Chiswick Bridge and Harrods Wall. Nikki Orr and club chairman Helen Turnel won the masters E category, beating second-placed Tideway club Mortlake Anglian and Alpha by seven seconds.