Houghton ruled out of Lucerne
Frances Houghton, twice an Olympic silver medal winner, has been ruled out of the weekend’s World Rowing Cup in Lucerne (11-13 July) by injury.
That means Wrexham’s Victoria Thornley will race the single scull – an event in which she competed last year and was amongst the World’s top 12.
Thornley will be part of a strong GB Rowing Team line up for the event, including the men’s four, quadruple scull and eight and the women’s quad and eight all of whom have travelled to Lucerne fresh from winning at Henley Royal Regatta last weekend.
“We will have our top guns in action in Lucerne for this final world cup of the season”, said Sir David Tanner, GB Rowing Team Performance Director.
“The Rotsee is a famous venue for rowers and we are looking forward to competing there despite the weekend’s forecast for very wet weather. It will give us a final chance to see our crews in action before they depart for the summer’s training camps and then onwards to the World Championships in Amsterdam”, he added.
The women’s quadruple scull of Kristina Stiller, Olivia Carnegie Brown, Vicky Meyer Laker and Beth Rodford and will be joined in the open weight event by their lightweight counterparts Charlotte Taylor, Ellie Piggott, Brianna Stubbs and Ruth Walczak.
Rodford was in buoyant mood after the crew’s Henley win: “This for us is all in preparation for Lucerne and moving forward to the World Championships so we had to learn things this week at Henley and I think we’ve done that and it’s great to get a Henley win. We still don’t feel like we’ve raced to our full potential yet and feel like we’ve got more in the bag.”
Piggott and Stubbs are World U23 Champions, Walczak won a single scull silver in Aiguebelette and Taylor a recent recruit to international racing reached the single scull final at the European Championships on her debut at this level. Taylor & Piggott also won silver in Aiguebelette in the Olympic class double close behind the top British boat to produce a rare world cup one-two.
The men’s four of Alex Greogry, Moe Sbihi, George Nash and Andrew Triggs Hodge remains unchanged.
Sbihi talked recently of his excitement about the world cup and World Championships to come: “It’s all going really well and the next six-to-eight weeks ahead of us is really exciting”.
Gregory added: “Henley is a good warm up for Lucerne. We’ll have a true indication of our competition for the World Championships there, and I’m looking forward to it”.
Then men’s eight has a different line-up since the last World Cup at Aiguebelette.
Paul Bennett and Matt Gotrel have moved from the men’s pair, in which they made an impact by taking bronze in Aiguebelette just three weeks ago, in to the eight that won silver.
Both are exciting, relative newcomers to the sport of rowing. Bennett has come into the squad after learning his craft at the University of London and the Boat Race. Gotrel, a strong junior international sailor, has progressed from the GB Rowing Team’s Start programme – a unique talent identification and development scheme that “grew” 30% of the London 2012 medallists.
Tom Ransley and Constantine Louloudis, part of the GB Rowing Team Olympic bronze-medal winning crew in 2012, both make a return to the crew in which Ransley is also a World Champion.
Ransley returns after an injury lay-off and via the second-ranked men’s four boat that reached the world cup finals 10 days ago. Louloudis has won his seat through internal team testing since finishing his university studies for this year.
The crew, stroked again by Will Satch, and coxed by Phelan Hill, enjoyed the contest with the French national eight in the final of the Grand Challenge Cup at Henley last weekend. Britain’s eight won and will have benefitted from the challenge.
James Foad and Matt Langridge take up the challenge of the men’s pair at Lucerne. They did not race at Henley.
Alan Sinclair and Scott Durant raced a men’s pair at Henley and will race a coxed men’s pair at Lucerne, steered by Henry Fieldman.
Elsewhere the GB Rowing Team is largely unchanged for Lucerne from the squad that performed so strongly in Aiguebelette.
Olympic champions Helen Glover and Heather Stanning race the women’s pair. The lightweight women’s double will again be Kat Copeland and Imogen Walsh who won in Aiguebelette.
The men’s quadruple scull will be Graeme Thomas, Sam Townsend, Charles Cousins and Peter Lambert who were winners in Aiguebelette and also at Henley.
Lambert said at the weekend: “We have so far only lost to one crew this year and are gaining a lot of confidence. We go to Lucerne and race there and we want to try and get the gold”.
Cousins added: “We should take a lot of confidence from our Henley performance. We went out a dominated our final and that’s what we look to do this week”.
Thomas said of the pressure of expectation on this crew since winning a medal at last year’s World Championships: “It’s a new pressure to deal with. Before when you’re an underdog there is no pressure, you’ve got that internal pressure now in what you want to achieve and everyone else is now expecting it also”.
John Collins and Jonny Walton will race the double scull after their final at Henley was billed as the ‘race of the Regatta”.
Alan Campbell returns to the world cup fray in the single scull after the birth of his daughter Tabitha.
The women’s eight, this time stroked by Cara McMurtry and coxed again by Zoe de Toledo, will race again in Lucerne. They will be looking to build on good wins over the Australians and Dutch at Henley.
Polly Swann, World and European Champion in the women’s pair who joined the crew in Aiguebelette for the first time said: “We’ve still got a lot of work to do. With every race we learn a lot about ourselves. We’re definitely gelling together more as the weeks go on. I’m really looking forward to Lucerne, seeing how we do on the world stage and then we have some miles to fit in before the World Champs. I’m confident if we put everything in place we can come out with a medal at the end of the year”.
The lightweight men’s four and double will race unchanged in Lucerne, where they will be joined by Adam Freeman-Pask in the single scull.
The para-rowing crews will not race in Lucerne but will now focus on their preparations for the World Championships.
BBC TV will cover World Rowing Cup III with a highlights programme on Monday 14 July from 16.00 – 17.30. The day’s delay is to avoid clashing with the world cup football final.
CREW LISTS (Includes club, home town, date of birth)
GB Rowing Team for the World Rowing Cup III
Lucerne, Switzerland 11-13 July
OPEN
WOMEN
Pair – Boat 1
Helen Glover (Minerva Bath RC/Penzance/17.06.86)/
Heather Stanning (Army RC/Lossiemouth/26.01.85)
Coaches: Robin Williams & Paul Thompson
Coach:
Eight
Rosamund Bradbury (Leander Club/Banstead/17.12.88)/
Louisa Reeve (Leander Club/London/16.05.84)/
Katie Greves (Leander Club/Oxford/02.09.82)/
Donna Etiebet (Sport Imperial BC/London/29.04.86)/
Jessica Eddie (London RC/Durham/07.10.84)/
Zoe Lee (Imperial College BC/Richmond, N. Yorks/15.12.85)/
Polly Swann (Leander Club/Edinburgh/15.06.88)/
Caragh McMurty (Reading Univ BC/Southampton/22.08.91)/
Zoe de Toledo (cox) (Leander Club/London/17.07.87)
Coach: James Harris
Single scull
Victoria Thornley (Leander Club/Wrexham/30.11.87)
Quadruple scull
(see also lightweight quad below who will race in open category in Lucerne)
Kristina Stiller (Tees RC/Yarm/23.06.87)/
Olivia Carnegie-Brown (Oxford Brookes Univ BC/Oxford/28.03.91)/
Victoria Meyer-Laker (Leander Club/Premnay/18.03.88)
Beth Rodford (Gloucester RC/Gloucester/28.12.82)/
Coach: Nick Strange
SPARES
Monica Relph (Leander Club/Cambridge/15.01.88)
Rebecca Chin (Agecroft RC/Salford/11.12.91)
OPEN
MEN
Pair – Boat 1
James Foad (Molesey BC/Southampton/20.03.87)/
Matt Langridge (Leander Club/Northwich/20.05.83)
Coach: Rob Dauncey
Pair – Boat 2
Oliver Cook (Univ of London BC/Windsor/05.06.1990)/
Phil Congdon (Molesey BC/Bury St Edmunds/06.06.1989)/
Coxed Pair
Alan Sinclair (Leander Club/Inverness/16.10.85)/
Scott Durant (Oxford Brookes Univ BC/Lancaster/12.02.88)/
Henry Fieldman (cox) (Imperial College BC/Barnes, London/25.11.88)/
Coach: Rob Dauncey
Four
Alex Gregory (Leander Club/Wormington/11.03.84)/
Mohamed Sbihi (Molesey BC/Surbiton/27.03.88)/
George Nash (Molesey BC/Guildford/10.02.89)/
Andrew Triggs Hodge (Molesey BC/Hebden, N. Yorks/03.03.79)
Coach: Jurgen Grobler
Eight
Nathaniel Reilly-O’Donnell (Univ of London BC/Durham/13.04.88)/
Tom Ransley (Leander Club/Cambridge/16.09.85)/
Paul Bennett (Univ of London BC/Leeds/16.12.88)/
Matthew Gotrel (Leander Club/Chipping Campden/01.03.89)/
Pete Reed (Leander Club/Nailsworth, Glos/27.07.81)/
Constantine Louloudis (OUBC, London, 15/09/91)/
Matthew Tarrant (Oxford Brookes Univ BC/Shepperton/11.07.90)/
Will Satch (Leander Club/Henley-on-Thames/09.06.89)/
Phelan Hill (cox) (Leander Club/Putney & Bedford/21.07.79)
Coaches: Christian Felkel & Jurgen Grobler
Single Scull
Alan Campbell (Tideway Scullers School/Coleraine/09.05.83)/
Coach: John West
Double scull
John Collins (Leander Club/Twickenham/24.01.89)/
Jonathan Walton (Leander Club/Leicester/06.10.90)
Coach: Mark Banks
Quadruple scull
Graeme Thomas (Agecroft RC/Preston/08.11.88)/
Sam Townsend (Reading Univ BC/Reading/26.11.85)/
Charles Cousins (Leander Club/Willingham/13.12.88)/
Peter Lambert (Leander Club/Henley-on-Thames/03.12.86)
Coach: Paul Stannard
LIGHTWEIGHT
WOMEN
Double scull
Imogen Walsh (London RC/Inverness/17.01.84)/
Kat Copeland (Tees RC/Ashington/01.12.90)
Coach: Paul Reedy
Quadruple scull
Brianna Stubbs (Wallingford RC/Headington/13.07.91)/
Ruth Walczak ((Molesey BC/Rochdale/15.09.88)/
Eleanor Piggott (Wallingford RC/Olney/16.05.91)/
Charlotte Taylor (Putney Town RC/Bedford/14.08.85)
Coach: Tom Evens
LIGHTWEIGHT
MEN
Pair
Jonathan Clegg (Leander Club/Maidenhead/14.07.89)/
Sam Scrimgeour (Imperial College BC/Kirriemuir/28.01.88)
Coach: Rob Morgan
Four
Mark Aldred (London RC/London/18.04.87)/
Peter Chambers (Oxford Brookes Univ BC/Coleraine/14.03.90)/
Richard Chambers (Leander Club/Coleraine/10.06.85)/
Chris Bartley (Leander Club/Chester/02.02.84)
Coach: Rob Morgan
Single Scull
Adam Freeman-Pask (Reading Univ BC/Windsor/19.06.85)
Coach: Darren Whiter
Double scull
William Fletcher (Leander Club/Chester-le-Street/24.12.89)/
Jamie Kirkwood (Leander Club/Creswell/30.08.89)
Coach: Darren Whiter
