Great Britain wins U23 gold and bronze at World Rowing Championships in Canada

Great Britain won two special medals on the first day of the U23 finals at the 2024 World Rowing Senior, Under 23 and Under 19 Championships, in St Catharines, Canada

Ben Jackson coached the Women’s pair (BW2-) of Holly Youd and Anna Grace to an incredible gold medal finish, more than two seconds ahead of Spain. After the race, with her World Champion medal around her neck, Holly said: “It was nice when we were warming up and as soon as we started racing it got a bit choppy. We had a race plan and we stuck to it and this was the best possible outcome! If you told me at the start of the year I’d be a World Champion, I would have said ‘absolutely not!”

It was a bronze medal for the Women’s quadruple sculls (BW4x) of Finnola Stratton, Meg Knight, Lily Abbott and Ellie Cooke, coached by Chris Bartley. Lily said: “It was really cool. We had a quick start and I think the whole thing was just a blur. It just happened really quickly. That’s probably the fastest we’ve ever gone so it’s pretty cool. We said coming into this that hopefully this is the summer for GB women’s quads so they [the Team GB Olympic Champion women’s quad] were a pretty cool inspiration.”

Ellie Cooke added: “Sculling in GB is on the way up and hopefully we’ve contributed to that. We’ve got some amazing talent coming through, some amazing coaches and the Olympics was obviously an inspiration, with the double also making the podium in Paris, hopefully that just keeps on going for women’s rowing!”

Photo: Benedict Tufnell

Earlier in the day, the Men’s pair (BM2-) of Mack Carr and Richard Hawes, coached by Sam Sheppard, comfortably won their B final, placing seventh overall in a very strong field.