Maidenhead Rowing Club featured in three crews at Henley Royal Regatta from 29th June to 3rd July. Two Maidenhead Junior rowers reached the final of the Fawley Challenge Cup - the first Maidenhead athletes to reach a Henley final for many years.

Fawley Challenge Cup
This competition is for quadruple sculls from schools and clubs. All competitors must be under 19. Maidenhead had competitors in two crews in this competition.

Dave Jones and Sam Ashburner teamed up in a composite crew with Nathan Jarman from Newark RC and Lewis Beech from Stourport RC. As a selected crew, they had a bye through the first round on Thursday. On Friday they started with a comfortable win against Stourport RC, winning by 2 lengths.

On Saturday, they had to race twice in the first and second from last races of the day. In the first race, they powered away and had a length advantage over the opponents from King's School Chester by the end of the island. The stretched this to 1 1/2 lengths by the halfway point and from there they maintained the distance clearly conserving energy for their next race. They finished 1 1/4 lengths ahead.

In the evening they raced the semi-final against Willem III & Die Leythe, Holland. After a minute the Maidenhead composite were a length ahead when their opponents hit the wooden booms and broke a blade. The sculler concerned removed both his blades from the gates and jumped into the water in order to remove 'dead weight' from the boat. However, by this time the race was effectively all over and the Maidenhead composite sculled in for a comfortable win.

In the final on Sunday, the composite crew got off to a good start and led at the barrier but were gradually overhauled by their opponents from Sydney Rowing Club, Australia. The margin at the finish was 1 3/4 lengths, the only race in the competition won in a time under seven minutes.

To get to the final was a tremendous result for Maidenhead RC and their coach, Tom Jost. Sam Ashburner is only 17 and Dave Jones only 16, so both will be back next year.

Maidenhead's other representative in the competition was 16-year old Matt Best, also in a composite, with Marlow RC's twins James and David Loveday (17 years old) and Oli Plant (18). They were coached by former junior international Dan Tipney also of Marlow.

They beat St Peters School, York, in the first round by some 2 1/2 lengths after waiting in a downpour on Thursday evening to start the race. This set up a meeting with Malvern Prep School USA which contained 2 US Junior Internationals who have competed at the last 2 World Championships. The Marlow/Maidenhead composite were much the sharper off the start but could not contain the extra experience and ages of the Americans and eventually went down fighting by 4 1/2 lengths.

This was Matt's first attempt at Henley. To acquit himself so well at only 16 years of age means his Fawley Cup future looks good.

Men's Quadruple Sculls
The men's quad of Richard Thompson, Neil Harvey, Mike Foran and Keith Dixon sculled strongly in their first round race on Thursday but came across a fast crew from Northwich Rowing Club who finished 3 lengths ahead of Maidenhead.