On Friday 6th March five crews from Falcon Boat Club featuring six rowers from Cheney took part in the Junior Inter-regional Rowing Trials held at the Olympic rowing venue at Dorney Lake. Competing in a 1500m time trial format the prize for winning crews was a spot on the team to represent the Thames Upriver West region at the national inter-regional finals in April. 

 

First up was the singles event with Ollie going for Cheney/Falcon in the under 16s. A very strong performance saw Ollie easily take the win and he will be going forward to Nottingham in April. A great winter for Ollie which also saw him selected for the GB under 16s training camp and qualify for the GB under 19s championship trials. 

 

Next up were the doubles with Seb and Oscar in the under 16s category. The boys pushed incredibly hard but unfortunately ended up in second place with only the first crew getting selected. 

 

 

The final boat was the under 14s girls quad with Rosa, Maddie and Jenny from Cheney. As expected the race for the win came down to a very tight finish versus local rivals Headington Girls. Both crews looked fast and well drilled coming down the course and when the results came in Falcon were fastest by 0.1 seconds!  

 

Unfortunately the story doesn’t quite end there as competition rules said that any race closer than 1 second needed to be decided by a side by side race off. With rain coming down the decision was made to postpone that to a different day. With several of the Falcon crew having already committed to Duke of Edinburgh on finals weekend the difficult decision was made to concede the spot to Headington so the girls will definitely be aiming to prove who’s best at other future races!

 

Congratulations to all the rowers and to Falcon Boat Club!