Medals for Bristol, Bath and Somerset rowers in Lucerne
28th May 2012GB rowers from Bristol, Bath and Somerset were back on the medal rostrum as the GB Rowing Team won five medals including three golds on finals day at the Lucerne World Cup - the last race before the Olympic crew announcement on June 6.
The women's pair of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning who came through the START talent ID programme in Bath, the women's double and the men's four featuring former UWE boat club president Pete Reed all continued to underline their Olympic potential with wins in fields bolstered by the arrival of crews from Australia, New Zealand and Canada. And Reed's crew also caused a stir when they smashed the world best time in their heat.
Frome's Paul Mattick was back in the GB lightweight men's four crew in place of the injured Peter Chambers and won a hard-fought bronze before the men's eight - featuring ex Monkton Combe pupil Alex Partridge and University of Bath graduate Marcus Bateman who switched from the men's quad since the first world cup - added an electric silver medal in the final race of the regatta in Switzerland on Sunday.
Winscombe's former Clifton College pupil Stephen Rowbotham, who won bronze at the Beijing Olympics, missed out on the final in the men's quad but won the B final to finish seventh overall while Glastonbury's Cameron Nichol showed the strength of depth in the men's sweep squad by racing a second GB pair to victory in his B final with Nathaniel Reilly O'Donnell.
“We said it would be tougher here and that’s been proven”, said the GB Rowing Team Performance Director, David Tanner. “We have still had some outstanding performances and I’m really pleased with how it has gone. The golds in the women’s pair, men’s four and women’s double were all exciting. The lightweight men’s four was a tough final and the men’s eight gave us a good finish”.
As it turned out, the GB Rowing Team front-loaded their finals-day performance at the season’s second Samsung world rowing cup – although the men’s eight set the atmosphere alight again at the close.
GB's three golds came for the Siemens-sponsored and lottery-funded team in the first session.
Helen Glover and Heather Stanning started the gold flurry with a win in the women’s pair final which saw the World Champions from New Zealand pushed back into bronze by a strong USA crew.
The men's four then served up the most dramatic race of the morning with an eye-watering race to the line with Australia, rowing through them in the final 200m. The four of Alex Gregory, Peter Reed, Tom James and Andrew Triggs Hodge took gold at the World Rowing Cup in a time of 5:50.84 in what looks like another in a series of big sporting clashes with Australia and capped a weekend which saw them set a new World Best Time in their heat of 5:37.86, smashing the previous mark of 5:41.35 - set by Germany at the 2002 World Championships.
Reed, who learned to row in Bristol, said: “We had a feeling before the race that they would try to do something special. That’s the way they raced in Bled last year and in the Olympic final as well. That race reminded me a lot of the Olympic final from Beijing.
"The Australian boat is always very classy but moving past them in the last 500 is something we hadn’t seen from our crew yet and that can be massively improved. An exciting race and good for the event - really pleased to get one up.”
Anna Watkins and Katherine Grainger continued their unbeaten run with victory in the women’s double scull from a newly-resurgent Polish crew with Germany third.
But it was not all plain sailing for the British team, however, with World and Olympic Champion Zac Purchase and his partner Hunter clearly out of sorts to finish in sixth place in the final of the lightweight men's double scull.
“It is good that this has happened here and now because we can kind of go back to the drawing board and make sure we are looking after ourselves a bit more and we have enough time to get things right”, said Hunter.
After lunch, the squad found the winning pattern hard to repeat. The fancied lightweight men’s four of Paul Mattick, Richard Chambers, Rob Williams and Chris Bartley led early but could not hold off China and South Africa, taking bronze.
Alan Campbell was fourth in a top-drawer men’s single scull final, the women’s quad and eight were fifth, the men’s double sixth and the men’s eight ended it all on a high by pushing the German world champions to the very end.