North West rower wins gold and smashes world best time

Photo: GB Rowing Team

GBRT Nation logo Cc with SfS logo and partners logos

North West rowers were among the honours and set a new world best time as the GB Rowing Team won five medals including three golds on finals day at the Lucerne World Cup - the last race before the Olympic crew announcement on June 6.

The women's pair, women's double and men's four featuring Chester's Olympic Champion Tom James all continued to underline their Olympic potential with wins in fields bolstered by the arrival of crews from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And the men's four caused a stir by breaking the world best time in their event during fast conditions during their heat.

The GB lightweight men's four crew featuring Chester's Chris Bartley won a hard-fought bronze - with Paul Mattick back in the boat in place of Peter Chambers and reuniting the 2010 world-title-winning crew - before the men's eight, without the injured Constantine Louloudis, but with the Knutsford's Ric Egington and Matt Langridge from Northwich added an electric silver medal in the final race of the regatta in Switzerland on Sunday.

Beijing Olympian Olivia Whitlam from Warrington was outside the medals in a new look women's eight, finishing fifth.

“We said it would be tougher here and that’s been proven”, said the GB Rowing Team Performance Director, David Tanner. “We have still had some outstanding performances and I’m really pleased with how it has gone. The golds in the women’s pair, men’s four and women’s double were all exciting. The lightweight men’s four was a tough final and the men’s eight gave us a good finish”.

As it turned out, the GB Rowing Team front-loaded their finals-day performance at the season’s second Samsung world rowing cup – although the men’s eight set the atmosphere alight again at the close.

GB's three golds came for the Siemens-sponsored and lottery-funded team in the first session.

Helen Glover and Heather Stanning started the gold flurry with a win in the women’s pair final which saw the World Champions from New Zealand pushed back into bronze by a strong USA crew.

The men's four then served up the most dramatic race of the morning with an eye-watering race to the line with Australia, rowing through them in the final 200m. The four of Alex Gregory, Peter Reed, Tom James and Andrew Triggs Hodge took gold at the World Rowing Cup in a time of 5:50.84 in what looks like another in a series of big sporting clashes with Australia and capped a weekend which saw them set a new World Best Time in their heat of 5:37.86, smashing the previous mark of 5:41.35 - set by Germany at the 2002 World Championships.

Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger continued their unbeaten run with victory in the women’s double scull from a newly-resurgent Polish crew with Germany third.

But it was not all plain sailing for the British team, however, with Olympic and World Champions Zac Purchase clearly out of sorts to finish in sixth place in the final of the lightweight men's double scull.

After lunch though, the squad found the winning pattern hard to repeat. The fancied lightweight men’s four of Paul Mattick, Richard Chambers, Rob Williams and Chris Bartley led early but could not hold off China and South Africa, taking bronze.

Alan Campbell was fourth in a top-drawer men’s single scull final, the women’s quad and eight were fifth, the men’s double sixth and the men’s eight ended it all on a high by pushing the German world champions to the very end.