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Rowing: World Cup round-up

June 1, 2024

Great Britain secured an impressive 11-medal haul this weekend at the season’s opening World Cup in Munich.

Vernon-Houghton-Rodford-Flood (l-r) bronze Munich 2011With a final tally boasting five golds alongside a historic one-two for the lightweight women’s double scull, GB’s rowers shone across a weekend of medal-winning performances.

Proving that their world silver medal of last Autumn was not a one-off, Heather Stanning and Helen Glover followed on from their dominant semi-final success on Friday to take the gold in the women’s pair final on Sunday.

Leading by clearwater at 1750m gone, the pair held off a strong American sprint to take their first world cup gold as a combination.

Speaking after the race, Helen said: “Our coach, Robin Williams, gave us a key word before we raced and that was to be ‘assertive’, so that’s what we did!”

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With world champion Anna Watkins out through injury, it was ‘super-sub’ Mel Wilson and Katherine Grainger who sculled to a controlled victory on Munich’s blue-hued water on Sunday.

After building a half-length lead over the USA at 500m, the pair held their advantage all the way to the line.

“Mel has had a great season so far in the single and it came together surprisingly quickly for us as a double,” commented Katherine. “It was a good race.”

Mel added: “There is always expectation when you row with Katherine, but it was a good feeling to win.”

Making history were Britain’s two lightweight women’s double scull crews of Hester Goodsell and Sophie Hosking in the no.1 crew and Andrea Dennis and Kathryn Twyman in the second-ranked boat. Cruising to victory, the lead boat took gold whilst the second duo secured silver.

“It’s great to make history and see two British crews on the podium,” commented Hester. “This is the level we are at - we’re all pushing each other on.”

Elsewhere, the final day of competition saw the reigning world champions Fran Houghton, Debbie Flood, Annie Vernon and Beth Rodford of the women’s quad (pictured above) take the bronze after a tough race.

Annie commented: “Right now we are all pretty angry. It’s important to feel how bad it is to lose to inspire you through the training sessions.”

Fran added: “The whole weekend has highlighted what we need to work on. It’s all totally achievable. You never want to finish down but you can learn from it.”

The women’s eight, coxed by Caroline O’Connor and stroked by Lindsey Maguire, beat off Romania for silver - the crew’s first medal of the 2011 campaign.

“We have never beaten the Romanians before, so that’s good,” said Louise Reeve.

Caroline added: “I think we’re all pretty pleased. We need to get out of the blocks a bit faster but we showed we have the raw boat speed.”

A ground-breaking performance for GB in the adaptive mixed double scull on Saturday saw Captain Nick Beighton take bronze with Samantha Scowen.

Speaking after the race, Samantha commented: “We’ve done something no other GB double has done before.”

“We now know that we can be competitive with some of the best crews in the world,” Nick added. “So now we’ve got to go back and work hard and see if we can progress.”

Elsewhere, both of Britain’s mixed adaptive coxed fours won medals - the first string crew which featured newcomers Pam Relph and the cox Lily van den Broecke won gold, whilst the second GB boat took bronze.

Naomi Riches of the gold medal combination said: “The race went pretty well, we stayed relaxed and long which we knew we had to do to pull to our best. We were determined not to let Germany catch us - we really wanted that gold medal!”

This important season for the nation’s top rowers culminates in the World Championships and Olympic qualifying regatta in Bled, Slovenia from 28 August - 4 September. Here Britain will seek to qualify boats into as many Olympic and Paralympic classes as possible, rather than through the last-chance final qualifying regatta in Lucerne next year.

Jessica Whittington, Sportsister
The Women’s Sports Magazine

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