SUPER SILVERS FOR INVERNESS ATHLETES AT THE SAMSUNG ROWING WORLD CUP AT ETON DORNEY
posted by Roy Sinclair - 27 Jun 2013, 8:35 a.m.
Silver medals were won by two Inverness athletes in last weekend's
Samsung Rowing World Cup on Dorney Lake, Eton in difficult, windy conditions
where Alan Sinclair and Imogen Walsh claimed their respective medals in the
men's coxless fours and women's lightweight double sculls.
This year 's GB men's four has a completely new line-up of Alan
Sinclair, Nathaniel Reilly-O'Donnell, Scott Durant and Matthew Tarrant, who
settled early on into third position in their final behind Australia and
Romania, giving themselves work to do in the second half of the race.
Refusing to panic, however, the British settled into a nice rhythm in the
second 1000m, rowing through the Romanians into second position and gaining
fast on the Australian four. They ran out of racing distance to overhaul the
Australians, however, and had to settle for silver just 1.3 seconds behind the
gold medal winning Australian crew - a fine return for the relatively new
crew, as Tarrant pointed out.
"It's really great; we have obviously had a crew change," he
said. "We've really made some good progress in the past couple of
weeks. Really encouraging training at Caversham but Friday was our first day
to see if everyone else has stepped on as well." Commenting on the tricky
racing conditions, Scott Durant added: "It's pretty tough out there.
When you are coming in on a crew like Australia like we were there, you really
put yourself in a lot of pain and only feel it when you cross the line.
"It's pretty agonising but it's good to come away with
something after a couple of weeks of preparation."
There was very little to choose between the six crews in the lightweight
women's double sculls over the opening 100 metres before the two British
crews competing started to slip behind Germany and Sweden in the second
quarter of the race.
Kathryn Twyman and Imogen Walsh then responded to put themselves back in
contention, coming through the Swedish pair to seize a silver medal just 1.7
seconds behind the winning German crew. Brianna Stubbs and Eleanor Piggott
finished fourth.
"We are a little bit disappointed with silver," Walsh said. "It
would have been ok if it was our best race but we didn't quite nail it
today. It took us a while to settle into a rhythm." Twyman added:
"We've been training all year in singles and were in singles for
trials so we've not had much time together. We've got plenty to
find."
Both Walsh and Sinclair will ramp up their respective training programmes over
the next few weeks in readiness for the next Samsung Rowing World Cup Regatta
which takes place on the Rotsee in Lucerne, Switzerland in the middle of
July.