THE Great Britain rowing team returned to training last week at its base in Caversham, for the first time since winning 10 medals at last month’s World Championships in Amsterdam.
The squad includes 20 recently-crowned World Champions following impressive performances from the whole team in Holland.
They include rowers in the men’s eight and four, as well as the women’s pair and para-rowing mixed coxed four.
The stand out performance in Amsterdam came in the men’s four and women’s pair - with Alex Gregory, Mohamed Sbihi, George Nash and Andrew Triggs Hodge dominating their final in the men’s four to take gold.
It was also a superb display from Heather Stanning and Helen Glover who set a new world record time in the process of obtaining their gold medal.
One of the upset’s of the day came in the men’s eights as the team of Nathaniel Reilly O’Donnell, Matthew Tarrant, Will Satch, Matt Gotrel, Peter Reed, Paul Bennett, Constantine Louloudis and cox Phelan Hill took gold ahead of favourites Germany, and Poland in a compelling race.
In an equally thrilling contest, the men’s quadruple scull of Graeme Thomas, Sam Townsend, Charles Cousins and Peter Lambert lost out on gold by a mere 0.09 seconds.
Tom Aggar brought home silver in the arms-shoulders men’s single scull in a performance which underlined his return to top form, whilst James Foad and Matt Langridge in the men’s pair and Alan Sinclair, Scott Durant and Henry Fieldman delivered a further brace of silvers for GB.
GB also achieved two bronze medals, coming courtesy of the men’s lightweight four which consisted of Mark Aldred, Peter and Richard Chambers, and Chris Bartley.
The other bronze came from the lightweight men’s pair of Jono Clegg and Sam Scrimgeour.
At the end of this week’s training, the squad will travel to Rio for a pre-Olympic orientation and training camp which will kick off the season in which Olympic qualification takes place.
Alan Campbell, Frances Houghton and Adam Freeman-Pask all missed out on Amsterdam but are all now back in the mix, whilst Olympic women’s double scull champion Katherin Grainger is also back training.
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