Local rower in GB rowing team squad for European rowing champs

Date published: 13 September 2011

Rowers from the GB Rowing Team with their eye on the 2016 Olympics or a late challenge for the 2012 team head to Plovdiv in Bulgaria this weekend to contest the European Rowing Championships.

A large number of nations send their World Championship crews to the annual regatta, which this year features 400 rowers from 29 countries, but GB will continue its policy of granting development crews the chance of top international competition, days after watching the senior squad secure a record haul of 14 medals at the Worlds in Slovenia.

The five boats bound for Bulgaria do include two rowers who tasted gold on Lake Bled though. Andrea Dennis and Kathryn Twyman were part of the victorious non-Olympic class lightweight women's quadruple scull in Slovenia with Bury's Steph Cullen and Imogen Walsh from Inverness.

Now they have another chance to impress in the lightweight double scull. The two women, both from Oxford, finished second behind GB's current lead lightweight double of Londoners Hester Goodsell and Sophie Hosking at the first world cup of 2011 in Munich in an historic one-two for GB and Goodsell and Hosking went on to qualify the lightweight women's double for the Olympics by claiming bronze at the World Championships.

Their coach Pete Sheppard, GB team manager for the European Championships, said: "They are excited as they are sure they can still challenge for seats in the lightweight double so it is an opportunity for them to gain experience.

"For us (the European Championships) is development athletes having their championship opportunity. A lot of the crews we will be racing have been at the World Championships so it will be a tough field.

"Our job is to make sure they learn a lot from the racing and the experience. Many of them still feel they can challenge for 2012 I'm sure but for most of them it is a longer term road and they are thinking about 2016.

"If we can get crews into finals that will be a good job done. Handing out medals might be a tall order."

GB will field a women's eight featuring Ro Bradbury from Banstead and Lincoln's Emily Taylor, who were spares at the Worlds, and Aylesbury's Monica Relph who saw her sister win gold in the adaptive mixed coxed four in Slovenia.

It also features another family connection, with Lancaster twins Mason and Scott Durant joining forces in the bow and stroke seat of the men's four, alongside fellow member of Oxford Brookes University Boat Club Matthew Tarrant who won bronze in the men's eight at this year's U23 World Championships and Shrewsbury's Fred Gill who rows for the Hampton-based Molesey Boat Club.

Another Molesey member, Henry Pelly, races with Preston's Graeme Thomas in the men's double scull.

Jono Clegg, who won gold in the men's four at the 2010 U23 World Championships, and Stockton-on-Tees' Chris Boddy who competed at the 2011 Munich world cup finishing eighth in the lightweight men's pair with Adam Freeman-Pask, complete the line up in the lightweight men's double scull for the event which runs from 16-18 September.

Lucinda Gooderman, from Diss in Norfolk, travels with the squad which flies out on Wednesday morning as spare for the women's eight.

The senior members of the Siemens' sponsored GB Rowing Team are enjoying their annual three-week break post World Championships and return to training for the start of the 2012 Olympic and Paralympic season at the end of September.