The Scottish Rowing Championships were held at Strathclyde Park on the 8th and 9th of June with all the rowing clubs in Scotland fielding crews aiming to become Scottish Champions. Inverness Rowing Club (IRC) travelled down with a strong contingent of junior, senior and masters rowers forming a selection of crews and making use of some of the boats recently purchased as part of the club redevelopment which has the aim of expanding the northernmost flat water rowing community. Attending Scottish Rowing’s showpiece regatta certainly ranks as one of the big highlights of the Scottish Rowing Calendar, with the opportunity to race against, and watch, the best rowers in Scotland.
Saturday provided some character building conditions with a strong tail wind down the 2km course whipping up significant chop in the second half, and proving a tough challenge to even get to the start (having to row up into the wind and waves). Nonetheless it was a strong start for IRC, taking the Masters C-E 2- title with an IRC/St Andrew BC composite crew (A. Dobson & S. Andrews). This success was quickly followed up by a win in the J14 2x from S. Hammock & R. Roxburgh. Conditions worsened through the day and despite no further wins for Inverness a huge amount of valuable experience was gained: rowing in such conditions is extremely challenging with even very talented crews struggling at times.
Sunday dawned brighter and the forecast was for dropping winds as the day went on. Strong performances were seen from Inverness crews throughout the day, with some success in the B finals (Nov 2x A. Hopkins & T. Latham, and WNovice 4x+ L. Sproull, N. Chasheva, J. Bromham, L. Ronald & J. McManus [cox]) but it was the turn of the singles to shine, featuring in some extremely tight and hard fought finals. The Novice 1x was up first with S. Andrews taking silver, only losing out by 0.76 seconds. S. Roxburgh then took a strong bronze in the J16 1x, racing in a composite field including J18 and Open category rowers, a number of whom he beat. One of the most exciting races of the day featured Inverness sculler S. Hammock who was edged out of 2nd place by just 0.05 seconds and was only 0.69 seconds away from first in a race in which the lead was constantly changing. A brilliant race to be involved in and to watch.
The focus of Inverness rowers will shortly be turning to The Inverness Head, held over our own 4.5km course on the Caledonian Canal in November, with crews forming and starting to build in the training sessions. Inverness Rowing Club is always looking to attract new or returning rowers. If interested in rowing more information can be found here: https://invernessrowing.uk/join/
