KING’S Ely’s Year 10-13 Rowing squads competed in the Peterborough Spring Regatta on June 1st.
It was a beautiful sunny day, jam packed with racing over the 1,000 metre course. Our Year 10 rowers had various heat wins, including the J15 Boys’ Double (Hector Macdonald and Will Buckingham) and WJ15 1x (Otilia Salgado). The Year 10’s all continued their development in small boats and some competed in a single for the first time and performed amicably.
The day culminated with the major finals – the Year 10 Boys’ Quad, who produced an amazing attack in the final 250m to finish second in the final against fresher crews. The Year 10 girls raced up a year group and finished 3rd behind two well established Year 11 crews.
Holly Lancaster (Year 13) produced a classy row in her single’s category as did Rebecca Garrett and Rahera Greatrex who stormed to victory in the Junior 18 Womens’ Double sculls.
During half term, over 40 King’s Ely rowers also took part in the UK’s showcase Junior Rowing Event, the National Schools Regatta at Eton Dorney.
Friday saw our Year 9 and 10 squads compete over the 2,000 metre course. For some of the Year 9 squads it was their first experience of the 2012 Olympic course and our Year 10 squads produced some very mature racing.
Year 10 boys Conall Comley, Will Buckingham, Hector Macdonald, Sam Martin and Ed Moss produced an excellent row in the time trial to finish 26th out of 61 crews. Our two Year 10 girls’ crews competed well in the most competitive category of the day and beat various larger rowing schools.
The Saturday and Sunday of the event saw our Year 11-13 athletes competing. The Girls’ Double of Rahera Greatrex and Holly Lancaster missed out on the top 12 (to qualify) by just 0.6 seconds to finish 15th out of 49 crews. Our second Girls’ Double of Holly Burke and Lucy Whiteside raced the same category, finishing 44th respectively.
The Boys’ champ Double of Alex Millard and Will White finished 26th out of 45 in their time trial putting in a strong row in arguably one of the toughest boys’ categories.
Finally our Girls’ Senior quad finished 21st out of 37 to wrap up a great weekend of racing for all squads.
Head of Rowing at King’s Ely, Craig Ward, said: “All our pupils showed great character and sportsmanship across the weekend and were a credit to the King’s Ely community.”
