News & Press archive for July, 2010

I hope you will all put your hands together and congratulate everyone who competed at the British Championships over the weekend. Good effort all round but a couple of performances deserve special mention. Firstly to the girls in the Junior Women’s Quad Scull (Jordan Cole-Hossain – Stroke, Lottie Hudson – 3 seat, Rebecca Eno – 2 seat and Phoebe Fisher in the bow seat). Though they had a little incident off the start with a pesky buoy they recovered quickly and spent the first 1000m working alongside the Scottish selected crew, they proved to much for the scots though and broke them in the middle of the race, pushing onto win comfortably. Well Done girls and for being selected to represent England this weekend at the Home International Regatta. Another mention should go to Paul and Jordan who with outstanding performances in there heats saw them avoid the Re-percharge and go straight to the final in there singles races. However doubling up is always tough and with only a couple of hours between there singles races and the quad races, they finished a close 4th for Paul (last couple of strokes it could have been the bronze) and 5th for Jordan. Really well done guys.

Other performances include

J17 Single Scull - Dimeji in his first ever 2k race may have come last in his heat but his time would have achieved a first or 2nd in any of the 3 other heats. 

J16 Single Scull – Tomas Simonds-Gooding finished 4th in his Semi-Final a good improvement on last year

WJ18 Double Scull – Rebecca Eno and Phoebe Fisher were knocked out in the re-percharge, The heat was there best race to date.

Open Junior Quadruple Scull – Demiji Ogonyoye, Liam Downes, Tom S-G and Paul Jones were also knocked out in the Re-percharge but was great to see them come off the water being proud of there performance.

It is not only the juniors from London Youth Rowing who get to go and compete in races, the coaches do too! One of our coaches, Steve Salter, had a great weekend at the British Rowing Championships on the 18^th July, competing for his club,  London Rowing Club. Steve competed in 3 events, the Open 8, Open Lightweight Coxless 4 and the Open Lightweight Pair and managed to walk away as the British Champion in all 3 events. The most important of these events by far was the pairs race, in which Steve and his partner managed to overhaul the crew who had been leading for all of the race in the last 50 metres to win the race by 0.56 seconds, the importance of this win was that it means that Steve and his partner have been selected to represent England in the Home International Regatta in Cork, Ireland on the 24^th July.

A week after Henley Royal Regatta, the championship course is used for Henley Masters regatta. It is an international regatta with crews aged between 27 and 87+ competing on this very beautiful stretch of the Thames. Our development officer, Penny Cuthbert,  took part in several races over the weekend and won the coveted Women ‘D’ Eights race. It was a tight race between Lea Rowing club and a composite crew of women from Walbrook and Weymouth. Lea won by a length and a half. Several of her crew members are lifelong rowers, one actually raced in the first ever Olympics for women at Montreal back in 70’s. Penny only started rowing when her own kids started and has been enjoying the sport ever since.

Coxing the boat was none other than Yaz Kone, 16, who started rowing 4 years ago through her school at Lea Rowing Club on a London Youth Rowing initiative. She has recently been concentrating on her studies so has taken to coxing the women’s squad quite regularly and brilliantly steered the crew to their win.

LYR cameras caught the action this week at Houses of Parliament where some of our young rowers were invited to compete in the All Party Parliamentary Regatta.

Young rowers from Thames Rowing Club (RC), Globe RC, Royal Docks RC and Lea RC made up the crews which were named Apples and Pears. This was in reference to the Black Rod steps they all had to climb to join the Lords for Tea on their terrace after racing.

The 4th July kicked off with the Adaptive Indoor event.

They came, they rowed, they conquered!

This is the view of all staff, spectators and participants who were on hand to witness the inaugural LYG Indoor Adaptive Event held at Crystal Palace this year.  Six boroughs were invited to participate on Sunday 5th July as a pilot, with plans to extend the competition to twelve boroughs in the second year. Spectators and volunteers on hand were treated to a dazzling array of performances from a determined group of athletes who wanted to show what they were made of – and that they did!

“The event gave young people an opportunity to compete in a great arena, in front of a supportive crowd, which is a wonderful experience to boast about!”

Each borough was set a series of four challenges to complete, which would have contributed points towards their total score, before taking part in the finals at Crystal Palace. Coming in to the finals, Lewisham had a slight lead on Hackney with Bexley sitting in third. However, after a series of gut wrenching performances by all the athletes present, Hackney was able to overtake Lewisham in the latter stages and seal victory to become the Balfour Beatty 2010 London Youth Games Adaptive Indoor Rowing Champions!

Tom Aggar, the reigning Paralympic and World Champion in the ASM single scull boat class, was on hand to present the medals to the winning athletes and even he was surprised to see the level of enthusiasm and effort displayed by both the athletes, the spectators and indeed the volunteers who were on hand to make sure that the event was a success. He hopes to be back next year and so do we with an even bigger and better competition for 2011.

The adaptive indoor event was followed by the mainstream event.

Fantastic! That is the only word that comes to mind when trying to describe this year’s Balfour Beatty LY Games Indoor Rowing Championships (Mainstream). The event was held at Crystal Palace after the inaugural Adaptive Indoor Rowing Championships which was piloted for the first time this year.

The event was managed by LYR who ran a series of indoor races dotted with a few celebrity challenges featuring Mr. Anthony Kendall, the Chairman of London Youth Games, Group Managing Director of Balfour Beatty Brian Osbourne, DJ Abrantee from Choice FM, England and Arsenal Ladies’ Footballer Rachel Yankey, Olympic Alpine skiers Chemmy Alcott and Dougie Crawford. Christine Ohuruguru was also in attenace to lend her support.

It was a keenly contested event with 27 out of the 33 London boroughs competing in what is now known as the show piece event for the entire Games. It was a closely fought battle but eventual champions Havering were able to hold off strong challenges from Richmond and City of London who claimed silver and bronze respectively.

Special thanks must go to Concept 2, who along with LYR handled the technical elements of the production but the games would not have been a success if it wasn’t for all the volunteers who gave of their time and effort to make sure that the event was sensational. We look forward to seeing them and you again next year for an even bigger and better LY Games Indoor Rowing Competition.

10 students from Pendragon School spent days completing a set of four different indoor rowing challenges for the London Youth Games Indoor Rowing Adaptive event, being trialled this year.

The challenges provided a different set of activites ranging from a team effort of rowing the distance of the Thames boat race course to individual attempts to pull a consistent split time. Jo Rowe, a dedicated PE teacher, was excited to be asked to find a team to compete for Lewisham this year.

Congratulations to Jo and the students for a terrific effort to get as many points in the challenges in preparation for Finals Day on Sunday 4^th which was held at Crystal Palace National Sports Centre last weekend.

Hackney, Hammersmith and Fulham and Bexley also joined in the challenges, but team Lewisham secured the maximum points in the build up.

Steph Ware, LYR Community Coach