Senior World Championships, Linz, Ottensheim, Austria
Leander Club had 31 athletes selected out of 64, across all boats in this very important year for qualifying boats for the Tokyo, Olympics 2020.
Below is the list of the Leander athletes in each boat and their result.
- PR3 mixed Coxed Four – GOLD- Erin Wysocki-Jones (pictured above)
- Men’s eight – BRONZE – Tom George, Ollie Wynn Griffith, Jacob Dawson, Tom Ford and Henry Fieldman
- Men’s Four – 3RD – Matt Rossiter, Sholto Carnegie
- Men’s Double Scull – 4TH- John Collins
- Women’s Single Scull – 4TH – Vicky Thornley
- Men’s lightweight single scull – 5TH- Sam Mottram
- Women’s eight – 5TH – Fiona Gammond, Jo Wratten, Harriet Taylor, Rowan Mckellar, Karen Bennett and Holly Norton
- Women’s Quad – 6TH – Jess Leyden coached by Jane Hall
- Women’s Four 7TH – Emily Ford
- Men’s Quad – 8TH – Jonathon Walton, Angus Groom, Jack Beaumont, Pete Lambert
- Women’s Pair – 10TH- Annie Withers, Sam Courty (rowed with Leander all season but listed as Bath Uni)
- Men’s Pair – 12TH Tom Jeffery
- Women’s Double Scull – 14TH – Ruth Siddorn
- Men’s Single Scull – 14TH – Tom Barras
- Men’s spare single scull – Harry Leask
- Men’s spare pair – Harry Glenister and George Rossiter
Overall GB qualified 10 boats from a possible 14 with 3 Paralympic boats.
Captain Vicky Thornley will do a more in-depth report on the World Championships in the next newsletter.
Junior Report
Following a successful HRR, the Leander Juniors began their international campaigns. We had four athletes racing internationally across three events; World Rowing Junior Championships, Coupe de la Jeunesse and Home International Regatta.
The final event of the junior rowing season was the World Rowing Junior Championships in Tokyo, Japan, where Miles Devereux was selected to represent Great Britain in stroke seat of the men’s quad and James Loveday Leander Junior coach was selected to coach the single scull. Both pictured above.
This was the test event for next year’s Olympic Games and an excellent opportunity for the best juniors in the world to experience an Olympic venue. The quad knew that racing on the world stage would be a significant step up from domestic racing and that the change in time zone and climate would place an added challenge to their experience. The standard of racing didn’t disappoint and the crew for GB came third in their heat with Germany and Russia. GB went on to win the repechage to qualify for the A/B semi finals, where they missed out on the A final by 0.4 seconds. The boys reacted incredibly well to win the B final with an outstanding sprint finish against Romania. Miles joined Leander as a J15 and has been an valued asset to the Club; he will spend next year rowing in Sydney while he makes applications for University.
At the beginning of August, Joe Willis and Stephen Hughes were selected to represent Great Britain at the Coupe de la Jeunesse in Corgeno, Italy. Joe Willis was selected in the men’s quad with athletes from Henley, Tideway Scullers and Nottingham Union. The crew won their heat on day 1 to move straight into the A final. In the final, Italy took early control with Spain, GB and Ireland battling for medals at halfway, split by less than 2 seconds. GB bettered the Irish, to come away with an exceptional bronze medal. Day two at the Coupe is always a challenge to replicate let alone better Saturday’s performance. GB were drawn in a heat with Saturday’s silver medal winning Spain crew and managed to close the gap between them to half a second. Come the A final, GB were unable to better Spain and Italy, and replicated their bronze medal performance, leaving Joe with two international medals under his belt. Stephen Hughes was selected as the reserve sculler, which meant he raced in the spares race both days. The race drew a larger than normal entry of 6 crews this year and Stephen took full control of the racing to win both days. Stephen and Joe are taking a welcome break over the summer and are continuing to row with Leander’s performance pathway programme next season.
The end of July was the Home International Regatta at Strathclyde Park, where Alex Milne represented Scotland as the Junior Men’s Captain, racing in the single and double. It was a big ask to race two events that were timetabled relatively closely together, but Alex answered the call to win both in fine style. As captain of the junior men’s team he had the privilege of lifting the Junior Men’s Team trophy for Scotland at the end of the day. Alex is going to Newcastle University in September; we wish him the best of luck in the future.
Overall it has been an incredible fantastic year for the juniors at Leander Club and we wish all those involved the best of luck in the future. We are now taking applications for the Leander performance pathway programme for athletic men and women, aged 15-20. Talented rowers and athletes from other sports are encouraged to register interest with James Loveday by email j.loveday@leander.co.uk
U23 World Championships
Leander Club had eight athletes and two coaches selected for The U23 World Rowing Championships in Sarasota, Florida between 24-28th July. As a Championship GB were fantastic topping the Medal table securing six gold medals and two silver.
Victor Kleshnev and James Cartwright were selected to race the double Scull coached by Leander Club coach Ali Brown. Both athletes have been rowing at Leander Club in the Development squad this season as a gap year before heading off to US universities in September.
This was a very young crew with both athletes only 19 years old, racing against athletes up to four years older than them. Despite the age gap, the Leander double raced well, narrowly missing out on the A final by one second, but then winning the B final in style securing a 7th place finish.
Charles Elwes who is studying at Yale University won a fantastic gold medal racing in the M4- coached by Leander Club ex-athlete, now coach Richard Chambers. The crew lead the field from start to finish and won by 1 second over a very strong New Zealand crew with Italy in 3rd.
The Men’s eight contained three Leander guys Leonard Jenkins studying at Yale university, David Bewicke-Copley studying at Princeton University and Harvey Kay studying at Washington University. After a strong first round heat, the crew had confidence in their speed and this showed as they took the final on in style, leading by around a length the whole way over crews from USA and Netherlands. The GB crew never looked by and crossed the finish line to take Gold by 2 seconds ahead of USA.
In the Women’s eight, we had two athletes, Hannah Scott studying at Princeton University, and Sophie Paine studying at Brown University.
The crew raced well in the final but were unable to live with the pace of the crew from the Netherlands but raced hard to withstand pressure from USA to hold on to a silver medal.
Finally, Morgan Baynham-Williams was selected to coach the Men’s and Women’s pairs, which was her first GB selection as a coach having been selected as a cox for many years. Both crews raced well and achieved 6th and 7th places.
Photos courtesy of Nick Middleton
