Ruth Walczak fourth in World Cup Regatta

Ruth Walczak rowing for GB in the World Cup Regatta in Lucerne

Ruth Walczak, 24, from Rochdale, represented Great Britain in the lightweight single sculls event at the World Cup Regatta in Lucerne, Switzerland. The regatta held over the weekend 12th-14th July was the third of a three part series in which Team GB took the overall World Cup title.

Ruth was just short of the podium with a fourth place in the lightweight women’s single’s event. The sculler, who learnt to row at Hollingworth Lake, was third at 500m but lost out to South Africa's Ursula Grobler for bronze. Brazil's Fabiana Beltrame won in a time of 7:34.33, unleashing a little foretaste of Rio 2016 on the banks as her supporters celebrated.

Ruth can take confidence from the fact that she finished ahead of London 2012 Olympians Canada's Patricia Obee and New Zealand's Louise Ayling - both having beat her in the morning's semi-finals.

"I think I’ve done a really good job here at Lucerne against some very experienced opposition. My intention was to get out fast and get stuck into the racing and I really delivered that today, coming through the last part of the race I felt so determined there was no way I was going to let the Kiwi through,” said Ruth after the race.

"Getting such a good representation of boats in the A finals is a strong result in the first year of the Olympiad, with many new crews at this stage.

"We have found the standard here higher than Eton Dorney, as we thought, we knew that medals would be hard to come by here", said Sir David Tanner, GB Rowing Team Performance Director.

“I’ve learnt so much through the World Cup races and I know what work I need to do on training camp now to deliver my best performance at the World Championships in Korea,” Ruth added.

Ruth is currently away on training camp in Breisach in Germany with Team GB in preparation for the World Championships, which will be held in Chungju, Korea at the end of next month.