04/03/08

Upper Thames Junior Girls win at Tideway Schools Head

Upper Thames Rowing Club’s women’s junior squad triumphed at the highly rated Tideway Schools’ Head of the River Race on Tuesday 4th March. They won the Women’s J16 coxed four event by a margin of some 19 seconds against all the other crews in their class; these included George Heriot’s School, Pangbourne, Monkton Combe, King’s Worcester and the Idroscalo Club from Milan, Italy.

The Upper Thames crew comprised Zara Milne (bow) Rachel Birch, Emma-Jane Girling, Sammy Holt (stroke) and Emma Wirt (cox).

The event is usually raced over the four-and-a-quarter-mile University Boat Race course in reverse - from Mortlake to Putney - but because of the weather it was decided to shorten the course to just over two miles (around 3400 metres) from Chiswick Eyot.

More than 270 crews were entered in what is now the premier event for schools sweep-oared rowing. This follows the decision three years ago to remove sculling from the programme because numbers had become unmanageable so popular was the event, and the Port of London Authority required an undertaking that the event would not be allowed to just go on growing.

So to meet the continuing aspirations of junior scullers and to compensate for the removal of these events from the Tideway Schools Head, a group of school rowing coaches formed themselves into a voluntary organisation calling itself The Scullery to organise an annual national level junior sculling head of the river race at Henley-on-Thames.

The Upper Thames crew comprised: Zara Milne (bow) Rachel Birch, Emma-Jane Girling, Sammy Holt (stroke) and Emma Wirt (cox).