Stratford Boat Club rowers head to Gloucester as Ross-on-Wye Regatta cancelled
STRATFORD Boat Club’s end-of-season plans were forced to change as the Ross-on-Wye Regatta was cancelled due to insufficient water in the river.
Instead, rowers headed over the Gloucester and Sharpness Canal to compete over the bank holiday weekend where they came away with a string of fine results.
Masters sculler Julian Foster was first up on the course and after navigating through his semi-final, he came up just short in the final against a competitor from Gloucester RC.
The junior squad were in action on the 650m course and in the WJ14 single sculls, Alexandra Francis put in a strong display but lost out to the event winner from Gloucester RC.
Seth Vondrak took to the water in the OpJ14 single sculls but narrowly missed out on proceeding further at the hands of a young Exeter sculler.
Lucy Sartain competed in the WJ15 single sculls and got through to the final where she narrowly lost out to Ross-on-Wye. Xavier Sissins-Roffey and Theo Richter represented Stratford in the OpJ14 category, where they were beaten by four lengths in a straight final against Gloucester.
Next up was the WJ13 double of Maeve and Isla Dunn who put in a powerful display to beat Hereford RC. Lack of WJ13 coxed quadruple competition meant Bryony Francis, Martha Baines, Millie Smith, Sophie Franklin and Poppy Warren (coxswain) rowed up to WJ14 level.
Here, they went on to reach the final where they would face off against clubmates Lucy Yang, Lily Warren, Alice Jones, Poppy Baines and Meg Nuttall (coxswain). Francis, Baines, Smith, Franklin and Warren took the victory by the finest of margins.
Martha Baines, Poppy Warren and Josephine Cooper set to work in the WJ13 singles, however, it was not to be their day.
A busy weekend for the J17/18 squad started on Saturday with Toby Sartain in the single sculls where he lost by a small margin to City of Bristol RC.
Next was Ruby Howells and Martha Usselmann in the WJ18 double sculls. Here, they fell short against a crew from Wycliffe Junior RC.
Amelie Sartain and Freya Watts came up against the Wycliffe crew that beat their clubmates but they fell short.
Division One ended with an exciting performance by Lucy Sartain, who did well to reach the WJ15 single sculls final where she lost by two lengths to Ross-on-Wye. Amelie Sartain, Watts and Elisabeth Edwards then competed in the WJ18 singles, however, none were able to progress beyond the quarter-finals.
On Sunday, racing started with the father-son combination of Nick and Toby Sartain in the open double sculls event where they came up short to Camarthen RC.
Howells and Watts started with a win but then faltered against Hereford RC. Amelie Sartain and Usselmann would then lose to the same Hereford crew by one length in the final.
The weekend ended with siblings Toby and Amelie Sartain in the mixed double sculls event who lost to senior rowers from Bristol Ariel RC.
