WBC Crowned National Champions at The British Rowing Indoor Championships

Representing WBC, Andrew Collett, Philip Tonkin, Lucy Rogers and Sammy Dartnall ventured to the Olympic Velodrome in London to compete in the British Rowing Indoor Championships on 12th December. After one and a half training sessions and arriving at the venue ten minutes before marshalling onto the race floor, preparations couldn't have gone any better...!

The team had entered the Mixed Relay which was split into 2 rounds: a 4km and a 2km.

Round 1 went well with WBC completing the distance in 12.42 (1.35 splits) with some very slick transitions and coming out 6.5 seconds ahead of the nearest competition who were some fit young whipper-snappers from Cambridge University.

There were then three hours before the second round, during which the team witnessed Moe Sbihi smashing Sir Matthew Pinsent's eleven year 2km British record in a time of 5.41.8 (1.25 splits for those wanting to try and emulate this!) ahead of seven other GB Rowing team members. The slowest being Pete Reed, who crawled in at 6.03.1, 9 seconds behind Matt Gottrell. Louloudis was unfortunately noticeable by his absence.

Round 2 of the Mixed Relay saw the GB Rowing team pitch up after missing Round 1. They obviously hadn't properly read the format however as four (!) of the GB women took part, managing only to achieve 3rd place with a time of 6.10. WBC came in 2nd at 6.03 (1.31 splits) narrowly being pipped by team #PINK who had come 2nd in round 1. On a cumulative basis however the WBC team were rightly crowned NATIONAL CHAMPIONS!!!!

All of the 2km categories were quite competitive but some of the 500 metre results were far from intimidating. See further detail here:

http://indoorchamps.britishrowing.org/content/results

For info the English Indoor Champs are on 31.01.16 in Manchester and entrance fee is much cheaper:

http://www.eirc.org.uk/includes/EIRC_2016_Entry_Form.pdf

Andrew Collett

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