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Maidenhead Retain Ravner Cup at Women's Henley |
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Saturday, 23 June 2007 |
Maidenhead Rowing Club junior women sent along two crews to this top International event for women held over the first 1500m of the Historic and prestigious Henley Royal Regatta course.
Maidenhead Rowing Club juniors demonstrated what a strong squad of junior athletes they have as they went on to retain the Ravner Cup trophy for School Junior 2x for the second year running. They also demonstrated the strength in depth they have by having a crew that made it through to the semi-finals in the junior quad sculls event.
The Henley medal win on the Sunday came from Maidenhead’s leading International junior athletes Louise Entwistle and Ally Brooks who competed for the Ravner Cup in School Junior 2x. In their first round they were drawn against a double from City of Oxford Rowing Club. Entwistle and Brooks demonstrated their fast start and by the end of the island they led by 1 length after the end of the Island and went on to steadily draw out to an easy verdict. In the next round against Canford they raced the same format to record another easy verdict. In the semi-finals Sir William Borlase School 'A' crew pushed as hard as they could in the first 2 minutes of the race to attempt to stay with Maidenhead but the power of Maidenhead took them ahead to establish an early lead which they went on to cruise to another easy verdict, In the final they were drawn against the Canadian National Champions so they had to ensure they did everything right. Entwistle and Brooks were very fast again out of the blocks and were pleased to be 2 lengths ahead after 2 minutes. Continuing down the course at a good rate they drew away with every stroke and despite cruising during the middle section they raced the last section hard to record a time of 5min 55s which equalled the winning time of the Elite doubles. So this was an excellent conclusion to Entwistle’s last time at entering a junior event at Henley.
Maidenhead juniors Aimee Campbell, Sophie Delaney and Katy Lion were joined by Hanna Moon of Kings School Canterbury to compete in the Junior Quad Sculls for the Bea Langridge Trophy. Three of these girls are going through final GB selection stages. In their first round they led from the start against Agecroft and went on to record a 5 length verdict. In the second round they raced against St Neots A crew where they recorded a good time and a 2.5 length verdict.
In the semi-final as expected, they came up against a quality crew from Henley Rowing Club who were finalists in 2006 and an established crew. Henley and Maidenhead were both fast out of the blocks and racing to the 500m point the crews were level, during the 2nd phase of the course both crew battled hard but Henley managed to open out a 1.5 length lead. A tough battle ensued down the course with the Maidenhead composite not letting Henley extend its lead beyond the 1.5 length. Pushing hard to the finish the composite went down by a margin of 1.5 lengths. This was a good performance considering the composite quad had very little time to train together as a quad. Henley led in the final from the start to record a 2.5 length win. So this was a good result for this young Maidenhead crew who can all do this event again next year so will be looking to go one better in 2008.
Captain of Juniors Billy Brooks said "I was very pleased to see yet again the progress the crews continue to make moving from semi-final achievements in 2005 to winning events in 2006 and 2007. The junior squad remains strong at the club and we have an exciting few years ahead of us. It was also pleasing to see a second batch of Maidenhead junior women move on to Universities this year and to note that Maidenhead’s Laurian Pepper made the finals of womens lightweight pairs and Jo Wright was coxing the Oxford Brooks University crew that won the Intermediate Coxed fours event." |
