On the bank holiday weekend (27-30 May) the Thames junior squad, supported by London Youth Rowing, embarked on four days of racing at the National Schools Regatta and Junior Sculling Regatta.

The new format meant that the majority of crews did a time trial followed by either an A/B semi-final or a minor final. This gave all crews a ranking through the weekend.

The major news from the weekend were the medals won by members of our junior women’s squad. On Sunday, the Championship Women’s double of Chloe Knight and Charlie Ball had been ranked fourth throughout the day in the time trial and semi-finals. They approached the racing very maturely and were aware of their ability to do three flat out performances in a day. Come the final they took the race to their competition. A very well drilled Headington crew took the early lead and left three crews, Northwich, Thames and Reading battling for the silver and bronze medals. Thames fought with Reading for a large chunk of the race and broke free from them entering the last 500m. There wasn’t quite enough in the tank to catch the Northwich crew ahead of them but both girls were elated to come home from the day’s racing with a National Schools bronze medal, a first medal for both of them and for coach James Loveday.

On Monday the squad raced at the Junior Sculling Regatta, which is a new national level event in place to cover small boats events that were removed from NSR due to the new format. Racing was made up of singles, doubles, quads and pairs from J14 to J17 level. Thames once again came home with a stand out performance from Chloe Knight in Women’s J17 singles. Going in as the favourite, Chloe had a very different type of racing to the day before, she was the one to beat and produced a time trial performance to prove it, coming home in first. She moved straight into the A final where she took the lead from the start in a strong tailwind and finished a dominant race with a clear water win over the field, taking home the J17 title and second medal of the weekend. Another notable performance came from Alex Kelly in J17 singles who qualified for the A final and came home just outside the medals in 4th place in a very high paced race.

Well done to all involved and thanks to coaches who supported head coach James Loveday in the lead up and on the weekend: Kieran Brown, Sam Glyn, Connie Pidoux, Hannah Stone, Sean Blake, Emma Baker and David Loveday.

The junior squad have now moved into crews for Henley Women’s Regatta and Henley Royal Regatta. Chloe Knight has also been invited to compete at GB Rowing’s final selection trial in Nottingham. The remainder of the squad will prepare to end the season at Junior British Rowing Championships in mid-July.

All results from NSR and JSR:
WJ171x Gold, ChampW 2x Bronze, J17 1x 4th, WJ16 1x 9th, WJ15 2x 9th, J154x+(JSR) 10th, Girls 4+ 10th, Champ 2x 12th, Champ 4x 13th, WJ15 4x+1 25th, WJ15 4x+2 14th, Champ W2x(b) 29th.