Maidenhead Rowing Club's top 5 junior athletes who have made it through the selection phases thus far were invited to a Spring Sculling training camp over 3 days, based in Nottingham. There were 50 top junior athletes from across the country invited to these trials - 30 girls (14 scullers and 16 rowers) and 20 boy scullers.

The objective of the camp was to rank these top junior athletes by carrying out 2000m trials and seat racing. In doing so, this ranking, together with a percentage speed check, was used to select the highest performing junior athletes for Munich International Regatta on May 5th and 6th.

The five Maidenhead athletes that went along to these trials all performed exceptionally well and their finish positions after day 1 in the sculling trials were as follows:

Maidenhead Girls
Ally Brooks led for the first 750m and finished 2nd.
Katy Lion finished an excellentl equal 3rd with 4 scullers.
Alice Ancora fell in just after the 1500m mark and her timings to this point placed her about 9th and after two days of seat racing Alice moved up to 6th position.

Maidenhead Boys
Phil Clapp was in about 3rd position at 750m and then sculled through the leading scullers to win by 3 seconds and take the Number 1 slot.
Adam Lilley performed well and finished in 13th place.

As a result of the 3 days Ally Brooks and Phil Clapp from Maidenhead have been selected to compete in singles at Munich International Regatta together with a crew boat. Ally has been selected in a double with Sarah Cowburn of Worcester RC and Phil Clapp is undergoing further trials with other athletes to decide if he should also be in a 2x or a quad.

The standard of the boys sculling overall was high this year as the top 5 scullers all finished quite close together. A 3 day pre-Munich training camp is underway following these trials finishing on Wednesday 4th April.

This is another exceptional performance to not only have Maidenhead junior athletes selected to represent GB at Munich, but to see the strength in depth of juniors from Maidenhead performing at this level.

At the next camp we are looking at adding at least one more boy and one more girl to compete at the small boats regatta, which with a good performance from the athlete, will result in an invitation back to final trials.

We are aiming to have Maidenhead junior athletes compete for all 3 levels of GB junior representation in 2007. This will be at GB France match for J16's in July, Coupe De La Jeunesse in Italy for J18's at the end of July and the ultimate junior level competion being the World Junior Championships in Beijing in August for J18's.

Billy Brooks