2017 Scottish rowing champsionships

Above: John calming the crowds who have gathered to watch during our annual training camp.

Over the 9th/10th/11th of June the Scottish Rowing Championships took place at Strathclyde Park, Motherwell and HWUBC enjoyed some exciting racing with the very best of Scottish Rowing.

For the previous two years, the Champs has been a three day event, with the Friday evening serving as time trials for the Men's and Women's 1x/2- as part of the Scotland Rowing Team selection process for the Home International regatta.  In the Men' single scull, John Heuchan Progressed to the A/B semifinals by placing 11th in the time trial.  John finished his sculling campaign with a 12th place overall finish after missing out on the A final.





​The club had 3 other crews racing in the time trials, all of which were Men's pairs.  The 'A' pairing of Michael May and Joe Nelson followed up on their 5th place finish of last year by placing 3rd, before coming 2nd in the semifinal and progressing to the A final.  The long time pairing led the A-final for out of the blocks for 250m before two very strong Edinburgh University crews showed their class and rowed through the entire field.  With 500m to go the guys sat in 4th place behind all 3 Edinburgh University crews that were in the final, but as the rough conditions cleared, their clinical sprinting ability was enough to surge through to take the bronze medal.
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Above: Michael May (Stroke) and Joe Nelson (Bow) during their time trial.

John also competed in the 2- alongside Sam Abernethy, coming 2nd in their C/D semi final and progressing to the C final.  Conall gray, representing the club in a composite crew with Southern California Scullers finished 6th in the other C/D semi final.  Unfortunately for both of these crews, adverse weather conditions made it too difficult for the races to be run and led to both of these finals being cancelled.

On Saturday, racing started well for our Intermediate Women's Double of Claudia Coulter and Eilidh Cuthbertson who progressed through their semifinal in 3rd place, eventually retaining that 3rd place finish in the Final.

Above: Eilidh and Claudia with their medals for winning the Intermediate category at the Scottish Student Sport Regatta earlier in the year.

Club Equipment Manager and resident genius Georgy Borisochev progressed to the final of the Novice Single Scull where he agonisingly took 2nd place, just barely missing out on the gold.

Michael and Joe competed in the Open Coxless Four in a composite with Strathclyde University in a two boat race against Edinburgh University.  An extremely strong competition and the fact that they had only had one session together before the race in very windy conditions meant that ultimately, the Edinburgh crew were the much superior.  

Finishing up on the Saturday Afternoon was our Men's Quadruple Scull comprising of Conall, John, Sam, and James Feeney.  This race was highly anticipated after previously getting the better of their competitors from Clydesdale Rowing Club at Castle Semple Regatta a few weeks previous.  Unfortunately the Clydesdale crew had a great push through the waves in the middle 1000m and rowed through our guys, who had to settle for 2nd place, well clear of the other three boats in the race.  

Sunday's Forecast threatened to be even more menacing than Saturdays but we got a brief period of nice water throughout the day before it turned more violent in the afternoon.  The day began with our lwt double, John and Sam, who finished 5th in their final.
As the weather turned, Some of the novice races were run as processional time trials, such as in the novice mens double.  This led to a nervous wait for James and Georgy up until the point that they released they had won the race by a mere 0.05s.  
The championships finished up with the previously mentioned pairs semi-finals and finals.

Above: Georgy and James with their medals after a close win in the novice double.