Bath rowers feature at National Trials
In the second stage of trials for the Great Britain Rowing Squads, University of Bath athletes once again represented their club with a great deal of success.
In the Coxless Pairs, Dave Lyons (Coach Ed, 2007) teamed up with a rower from Imperial College to finish 10th overall and recorded the fastest Under-23 time of the weekend. With a very strong performance they were less than half a second behind the Cambridge Pair of Olympic Champion Kieran West and former Olympian Tom James.
Heather Stanning (Sports Tech, 2007) continues to demonstrate to the selectors that she is on track for a place in the Under 23 World Championships Team in 2007 by being the sixth fastest Under-23 female competitor. To put this into context, Heather has only been in the sport for 2 years and is racing against (and beating) other women who have been rowing for 5 or 6 years. This is yet another impressive result after having won BUSA Gold at the National Indoor Rowing Championships earlier this year.
Heather is one of the latest Bath-based athletes to be selected onto the World Class Start and Potential Programme which identifies and develops future International oarsmen and women with their eyes on Beijing in 2008 or London in 2012. The World Class Start Programme is funded by Lottery Money via UKSport and is sponsored by Siemens.
In other Bath boats, Matt Allen (Chemistry, 2007) and John Clay (Coach Ed, 2007) showed considerable improvement since the last trial with John finishing as the 16th fastest U23 sculler in the country.The next round of trials is in February where we should see Dave, Matt, John and Heather rejoined by Sian Ripley and Anna Davidson who missed this trial due to injury and illness respectively.
