News & Press archive for March, 2009

Photo from The Boat Race website

NJIRC boat race relay winners, Bexhill College Boys and Nottingham Boat Club Girls, enjoyed their well earned prize of following the 155th Oxford Cambridge Boat Race from a Royal Marines Launch.

Oars clashed between the crews at a sweeping middle bend, when Cambridge crew, intially ahead, prepared for a push. However Oxford stormed to victory winning by a comfortable 3 and a half lengths.

Children from Oaklands School, Tower Hamlets and Graveney School, Wandsworth were doing their bit to lead the way at the Health of the Nation Tackling Obesity 2009 which took place on Wednesday 30th March at the QEII conference centre.

The schools took part in a relay, with celebrity commentator Steve Redgrave, providing rowing hints and tips throughout. Oaklands School took an early lead and proved uncatchable. Both Tower Hamlets and Wandsworth PCT have been actively involved in supporting and promoting LYR’s programmes as fun activities useful in tackling obesity that appeal to all. Richard Sangster, Head of National Healthy Schools Programme, told the Tackling Obesity Conference: “If we don’t educate children now, we’ll be living with the consequences in the future, today’s children are the futures parents and if they aren’t educated how can they give their children the correct message and example.”

On Saturday 28th March, London Youth Rowing (LYR) hosted an online transatlantic race with fellow community rowing group, Chicago Training Centre (CTC), in Chicago Illnois.

Individuals competed on indoor rowers in a series of races with machines on each side of the Atlantic battling it out. The finale was a boat race relay with 5 teams taking part – three from LYR and two from CTC, with each side watching each other through webcams.

Well done to all who took part!

For more information on the Chicago Training Centre click here.

Congratulations to Alexandra Park School rowing team who won the first ‘Haringey Schools Rowing Championships’.

The team was selected following their excellent performances at the Haringey Rowing Road Show, which visited APS earlier this month. Competitions Manager Nicholas Nanikhan, toured all secondary schools in the borough with ten indoor rowing machines giving hundreds of students the opportunity to compete at rowing and participate in a virtual competition.

This culminated in the rowing championships where the best rowers from Year 7 to Year 11, from each of the schools, were invited to come together to race off, to be crowned Haringey Rowing Champions.

Following this, the best students will be invited to represent Haringey in the North London Rowing Championships & London Youth Games to be held later in the summer.

APS TEAM: RACHEL MURPHY; MARTIN VELKOV; DONJETA KRASNICI; SHAMIR MULLINGS; FIONA IFEOSU; SERCAN OZBERBER; AMBER LYSIS;  KHONNOR McWILLIAMS – PRIME; HANNAH FENTON-BURGESS; DAVID WHYTE.

Recently pupils from all over London have been enjoying on water rowing at the London Regatta Centre, Newham.

A mini bus full of year 7 & 8 pupils from Barnet schools, Hendon and St. James’ came to LRC for a special taster day for gifted and talented students. Langdon Park, Tower Hamlets, also brought some talented individuals down to have a go.

Everyone experienced getting out in a boat and developed new on water skills. The group are keen to return in warmer weather for LYR summer course.

On the 19th March BBC London Radio interviewed Row East London Programme manager, Grainne Mohan along with Tom Aggar, Paralymic gold medallist  and LYR board member on the Midweek sports feature.

The BBC were celebrating the return of the coverage of the Oxford Cambridge boatrace to the BBC from ITV. This sparked the conversation if rowing is accessible to all or only ‘toffs in boats rowing from the pimms to the champagne’.

Row East London! is a major new fitness and health initative which provides access to rowing for young people across the 10 east London Olympic and Gateway boroughs.

One of the Newham beneficiaries of LYR’s work sent in a text to the show, saying how she enjoyed participating in and coaching rowing in her borough.

To find out more about Row East London and how you can get involved, click here.

Rankings for NJIRC are now available online, click here. Full results to follow.

Many thanks to all who participated yesterday and well done to those who picked up medals!

We are adding results from NJIRC 2009 as we get them to Twitter.  Follow us on twitter.com/lyrowing.

London Youth Rowing (LYR) yesterday launched Row East London!,  a new physical activity and sports initiative for the ten Olympic and Gateway boroughs¹ at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships in front of over 2000 young competitors.   

Row East London! is a scheme designed to encourage more young Londoners into regular physical activity and provide pathways to rowing and other sports.

‘London has a huge population of young people and not enough of them take regular physical activity.  In the run up to the 2012 Olympics, we expect projects like Row East London! to get more young people on the path to a healthier lifestyle and to inspire them to take up sport.  I would like to see it extended further in London’   said the former Sports Minister, who is now the Mayor of London’s sports commissioner.

Katherine Grainger, triple Olympic silver medallist for Great Britain, spoke on behalf of her fellow athletes who had turned up to support London Youth Rowing – Tom James, gold medallist (Beijing four), Frances Houghton, silver medallist, (Beijing women’s quadruple scull) and Tom Aggar, gold medallist, (Beijing Paralympic single scull). 

‘It’s fantastic to see the number of young people who’ve come to take part in the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships and the quality of some of the racing.  Row East London! will further swell the numbers from London and maybe some of those will row and one day stand on the Olympic rostrum alongside us. ‘ said Grainger, who is also a LYR board member.

As part of the launch, teams representing each of the ten Row East London boroughs took part in a relay race. Each of the assembled VIPs, which included the Mayors of Bexley, Barking & Dagenham and Waltham Forest, the deputy mayor of Havering, Di Ellis, CBE, Chairman of the Amateur Rowing Association and Howard Jacobs, Chairman of the ARA, were assigned a team to support during the race, with the winning team receiving their trophy from 2008 Olympic gold medalist Tom James.

Row East London! received £628,000 in funding from Sport England.  Thomas Godfrey, Sport England’s Commercial Director, said:

“Sport England is supporting the Row East London programme because it will bring quality sporting opportunities to young people in east London.  This project is going to use the power of rowing to engage young people in a wide range of sports. Access to quality coaching and competitions will help make sport a life-long habit for the young people taking part.”

The Mayor of Barking & Dagenham jumps on the ergo instead of his missing team!

(Article and picture from Bexley SSP website)

The event brought together 14 teams from the participating 9 East London Boroughs. The event consisted of 11 time trial races, 2 races in each year group (1 male, 1 female) and final relay which combines everyone in the 10 person squad to race for 1 minute each.

The Bexley SSP team, consisting of pupils from years 7-11 and from 5 different schools ( Trinity, St. Catherine’s, Woodside, Erith and Townley Grammar School ) demonstrated amazing sportsmanship and teamwork, but above all effort. Through the determination of the team, the rowers managed 6 out of a possible 10 podium finishes.

This amazing demonstration of support and individual and team effort culminated in the Bexley School Sports Partnership lifting the overall trophy. East London Rowing Champions 2009.

The development of rowing has been supported by the work of the Partnership to either fund, or through its partnership with Row East London, to provide rowing machines in schools to support PE and cross curricular lessons, extra curricular clubs and to support the healthy lifestyles agenda.

The top performers from these championships will now be approached to represent Bexley at the London Youth Games and also at the National Indoor Junior Rowing Championships (NJIRC)

For more photo’s visit the Bexley SSP website (and scroll to link at bottom of page)