Asda Athletes

I have been selected as part of a team of 6 girl scullers to represent Great Britain at the Junior World Rowing Championships this summer, taking place in Plovdiv, Bulgaria 15th-19th August!

Last weekend I came second in the Junior 17 Girls Singles. The field was strong and I beat many of my close rivals so I was really pleased with the result!

The regatta took place over the 5th and 6th of May. It was a great success for the GB girls scullers and I came home with two gold medals after winning the junior girls quad on the Saturday and winning my heat in the women’s double (with partner Emily Ford, pictured) on the Sunday. The standard at the regatta was extremely high so a good performance there helps to indicate to the coaches the size of team appropriate for the Junior World Championships this summer. Getting selected for Munich is by no means a guarantee that I’ll make it to Worlds, but hopefully my good performances there and continued hard training will turn selection in my favour. Final selections will be made at final trials at the beginning of July, so until then the constant physical and mental demands of training continue.

GB Spring Assessment Trials was almost three weeks ago now and it was probably the best weekend of racing I’ve had. On the first day I won the singles trial; beating a lot of athletes that I had never beaten before. I was thrilled with the result and I continued to race well over the weekend during seat racing and subsequently earned myself a place on the GB Rowing Team for the forthcoming Munich Junior Internation Regatta, taking place on the 5th and 6th May. Being a part of a team of only 5 girls scullers selected is a great achievement so I’m really looking forward to facing some tough European competition and showing them what we can do!

Today I competed at the National Junior Sculling Head at Dorney Lake: the Olympic Regatta Course. The event is primarily for quads so I teamed up with 3 other girls from my club to compete against athletes from all over the country. Juggling training in my single for GB trials in a couple of weeks time and training in the quad for today has been a bit of a struggle but it was all worth it as we won with a margin of just over 6 seconds on 2nd place! It was our first major event competing in this combination so we were so surprised and delighted with the result!

I am now building up for a gruelling 2km test which takes place next weekend at the GB Rowing Team training centre in Caversham with the rest of the junior athletes trialling for the team! Over the following weekend I will be racing over 3 days for a place on the GB squad for the Munich Junior Regatta in May. These upcoming two weeks will be a real test and hopefully the hundreds of hours of training that I have put in over the winter will pay off!