Juniors impress at the National Schools Regatta

The National schools regatta held over the weekend of the 25th-26th of May, is a huge event held at the Dorney Olympic Rowing course. Racing is held over the full 2000 metre, 8 lane course and is the most competitive junior event of the year with many public schools attending.

On Saturday, in the Championship Girls single sculls event, there were 48 competitors who all took part in a time trial over 1900 metres with only sixteen scullers proceeding through to the semi finals.

Amelia Moule finished in the top sixteen in a time of 7:56 securing a place in the semi finals with the top four crews in each race going through to the A final and the bottom four crews going through to the B final. In the semi final Amelia had a tough race and finished in 8th place in a time of 8:30 which took her through to the B final.

This final line up included some big names in Junior rowing, amongst them members of the GB rowing team! Despite the high level of competition, Amelia had an outstanding race, holding on to third place for a large proportion of the race. At the finish a huge effort was put in by all the scullers and final placings were very close with Amelia finishing in 5th place with an excellent time of 8:24.

Amelia's final result was 13th out of 48 scullers which is a huge achievement for the Sudbury sculler.

The following day, on Sunday, saw more Sudbury Juniors put in impressive performances. Byron Bullen and Sam McLoughlin raced against the best J18 doubles in the UK. Although they did not progress past their time trial, they achieved a very respectable 21st place beating a number of their local rivals easily.

Martha Bullen, rowing with a relatively new Ely girls quad, won their time trial and were the fastest in the A/B semi final. They should have won, however one of the girls caught a massive crab and they had to stop to recover the blade. Not deterred, they then put in a massive 1500m to finish 4th, only 6 seconds behind a Henley A crew who were the overall winners of the race.

An inspiring performance from Sudbury Juniors, up against the biggest and best rowers that Britain has to offer.