Great Britain handle the heat

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The GB Rowing Team got off to a fantastic start at the World Rowing Championships in Linz-Ottensheim, facing off against 30-degree heat to see 13 crews progress through to the semi and quarter finals.

With today marking one year to go to the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, GB’s Para-rowing squad had a clean sweep of first place finishes with all three crews progressing through to the A/B semi-finals.

The PR3 mixed coxed four put in an outstanding performance in their heat, crossing thefinish line just two seconds behind the world best time. The crew, of Ellen Buttrick, Giedre Rakauskaite, James Fox, Oliver Stanhope and cox Erin Wysocki-Jones finished 13 seconds ahead of the next fastest qualifiers.

Paralympic gold medallist Fox said: “We did exactly what we set out to do, went out really hard and went really fast. We can take a lot of confidence from that; especially that we almost broke the world record in the heat and we didn’t even go to the line. We’re excited for Thursday and Saturday as well.”
Racing together in their first World Championships since 2015, Paralympic champions Lauren Rowles and Laurence Whiteley were the fastest qualifiers for the semi finals of the PR2 mixed double sculls by over 14 seconds.

Rowles, who won silver in the PR2 women’s single sculls at World Cup II in Poznan earlier this season, said: “It’s so great to be back out there at the World Championships. We wanted to go out there and put everything we’ve been doing in training into the race and show our dominance.
“We’re excited for the semi-final now; it’s great to have an extra race to try different things out and build our experience.”

In his debut World Championships, Benjamin Pritchard beat last year’s world bronze medallist Alexey Chuvashev to the one automatic qualification spot for the A/B semi final of the PR1 men’s single sculls. The event was an emotional one; the entire GB team have been wearing black ribbons in memory of Dzmitry Ryshkevich, the Belarusian para-rower who sadly died earlier this week in training.

Remarking on the heat, Pritchard said: “There are two big races for me in this World Championships and today was one of them. It was such a hard fought battle and I’m really glad I came out on top. It was a fitting tribute to the memory of Dzmitry.”

Director of Performance Brendan Purcell said: “As a team we’ve had a very strong start tothe World Championships; the initial performances from the majority of our crews showed that the work on the training camps has paid off.
“The three Para-rowing crews have been outstanding and have certainly set a high standard for the rest of the field.”

Tom Dyson, Chief Coach for the Para squad, said: “I’m really pleased for the team today; the four in particular were outstanding and really stamped their authority on the race. The results show that we are where we thought we were throughout the training camps; we’ve put ourselves in a good place to contend for qualification and are looking forward to the weekend.”