U23s challenged to show Tokyo 2020 potential at Worlds

A talented squad packed with medal-winning experience has today been announced by British Rowing for this month’s U23 World Rowing Championships in Rotterdam, The Netherlands.

Sir David Tanner, British Rowing’s Performance Director and Overall Team Leader in Rotterdam, said “This is a key year for our Under 23s as we look towards the Tokyo Olympic cycle. Our rowers have the chance to impress at the Championships and stake a claim to a step on the Olympic ladder for 2020.”

Of the 57 rowers selected, 26 have competed at the championships in the past and can boast 13 medals between them.

A further 12 rowers have previously represented Great Britain at the World Junior Championships, including two history-making gold-medallists – Jess Leyden and Gavin Horsburgh – of whom Horsburgh will be making his U23 debut when the regatta takes place from August 21-28.

Leyden – who became the first Brit to win an international women’s single scull title at the 2013 World Juniors – was fourth in the single at the World U23 Championships in 2014 and has no shortage of experience having raced in the senior women’s quadruple scull during the past two seasons, the boat missing out on Olympic qualification by two places.

She will team up in the women’s double with Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne, who made an impressive senior debut in the single at this year’s European Championships and returns for a third successive World U23s.

Another rower with senior experience is Sam Mottram, who raced with the lightweight men’s quad at last year’s World Championships a month after winning silver in the same boat at the World U23s – one of six medals won by GB in Plovdiv, Bulgaria. He will contest the lightweight single this time.

This year’s lightweight quad includes Horsburgh, part of the first-ever GB men’s quad to win a gold medal at a global championships during last year’s World Juniors in Rio. He is joined by newcomers Oliver Varley, Hugo Coussens and Matthew Curtis.

Ed Fisher, Benjamin Reeves, Alastair Douglass and Jonathan Jackson have been named in the lightweight men’s four for a second successive year and will be looking to get on the podium again and step up a notch having won bronze in 2015.

The open men’s four are no strangers to the World U23s either, having made nine previous appearances between them.  Lewis McCue – going to a fourth successive championships – and James Johnston both won silver in the boat last year and are joined this time by Tom George and James Rudkin, who finished fourth in the men’s pair in Plovdiv.

The women’s four contains two medallists from 2015 in Rowan McKellar, who won silver in the pair, and Hattie Taylor, who won bronze in the eight. They are joined by two former World Juniors, Lauren Kedar and Saskia Budgett.

Georgia Francis, who won silver with the eight in 2014 and raced in the double last year, will make her latest U23 appearance in the women’s quad alongside Lucy Burgess, Ruth Siddorn and Kyra Edwards, a silver-medallist in the quad at last year’s World Junior Championships.

Susannah Duncan was a team-mate of Edwards in Rio, winning her second World Junior medal in the process.  Both she and Mary Wilson will make their U23 debuts in the lightweight women’s quad, alongside Ellie Lewis – a bronze-medallist in the boat in 2013 – and Maddie Arlett.

In the women’s eight are Emily Ford and Holly Hill, who won bronze with the four last year, plus World Junior medallists Charlotte Hodgkins-Byrne – Mathilda’s younger sister – and Anna Thornton. Alice Bowyer, Chloe Brew, Madelaine Badcott and Heidi Long complete a crew coxed by Sasha Adwani.

The men’s eight also contains two World Junior medallists in Oliver Wynne-Griffith and Matthew Benstead, as well as Calum Irvine, Tim Livingstone, David Bewicke-Copley, Sholto Carnegie, Robert Hurn, Arthur Doyle and cox Ian Middleton.

Harry Leask and Andrew Joel continue in the men’s quad for a second successive year, joined this time by Harry Glenister and 2014 World Junior medallist Rowan Law.

Tom Barras, who has been part of the quad for the past couple of years, has been the top U23 sculler this season and goes in the men’s single.

Rory Gibbs and cox Harry Brightmore, who were in the eight in 2015, will contest the men’s coxed four alongside Christopher Heywood, Michael Glover and Michael Aldridge, while debutants Oliver Hines and Graham Ord form the men’s pair.

This year’s World U23s are taking place alongside both the Senior and Junior World Championships, with more than 100 GB rowers in total competing on the Willem-Alexander Baan rowing course during an action-packed week.

Click here to see the Senior squad and here to see the Junior team.

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