National Championships

This year's National Championships of Great Britain were held on the 2000 metre multi lane course at Strathclyde Country Park just outside Glasgow. Despite the distance to travel Henley Rowing Club sent a full contingent of Juniors, 17 boys and girls, who successfully competed in 7 events all reaching finals and returning with silver and bronze from two of the events.

The J14 boys quad of Andrew Ford, Simon Jones, Peter Wagner, Chris Clarke and cox Kate Thomas have had a very succesfull year winning nearly all their Regattas and were therefore quietly confident of winning a medal.  Finishing second in the eliminating rounds the boys qualified directly for the semi finals which they won with a comfortable margin. From the times of the heats it was evident that in the final the competion was going to come from St Leonards School and Yarm School. The start of the race was a disaster with the umpire ignoring the correct procedures and giving the "go" before many of the crews where ready. This saw the Henley boys at the back of the pack at the 500 metre mark but the boys sculled well to pull themselves into second place behind St Leonards by the 750 metres but with Yarm school close behind. The effort of catching up from the bad start proved just to much for the Henley boys and Yarm just pipped them for the silver medal leaving Henley to take the Bronze.

The silver medal came from the girls under sixteen double scull of Kaye Davies and Lucy Lewington. The girls had not practiced for this event having concentrated on what should have been their main event the J16 Quads. The girls showed real class winning their eliminating round comfortably establishing control of the race very early on.  In the final the girls again established an early lead but where unable to shake off local rivals Sir William Borlase School who took the gold medal after taking the lead in the last 300 metres.

Kaye and Lucy also competed in girls junior quad event with Hannah Smith Willis and Becci Griffiths. The event actually being above their status as their J16 event was cancelled by the organisers due to a limited entry. The girls performed well to reach the final of this event but the strong head wind favoured the bigger girls on the day.

Also unlucky with the wind was the girls Junior coxless 4 of Caroline Green, Gemma McIntosh,  Melanie Gilson and Lucy Darke who where disqualified in the final of their event after only 300 metres of the race. The gusting wind causing difficulty with the alignment off the start and the girls unfortunately drifting into the crew in the adjacent lane.

Some of the best racing out of all the Henley crews came from the girls J16 coxed four of Natalie Robinson, Gemma Johnson, Hannah Read, Natalie Mcintosh and cox Hannah Boyd.  The event contained some very high class crews the George Heriot four who won the event also winning the older junior coxless 4 catergory easily. The girls reached the final via the repacharge which they won comfortabley and in the final finished in that very hard postion of fourth place just outside the medals.