Great Britain’s rowers warmed up for the Tokyo Olympics in emphatic style by winning gold in the women’s pair, men’s eight and men’s four at the European Rowing Championships.
The double Olympic champion Helen Glover was racing in her first competition since winning gold in the women’s pair at the 2016 Rio Olympics, and won the same race alongside Polly Swann in Varese, Italy.
Glover, 34, has had three children in the five years since, but on her return to competitive action, she and Swann held on to pip the Romanian and Spanish crews in the final, both by less than half a length.
“I was thinking today: ‘Am I going to make it down the track?’ ” Glover said. “It is silly as I do it every day in training but something about racing makes those doubts come to the surface.
“Now I have squashed all those and I can move forward and be the athlete I know I am and become the athlete that I want to be as well. The last quarter, I thought: ‘OK, they are all coming back at us.’ In the middle of the race we felt quite in control. Maybe that left us missing a gear but I was happy with the result overall.”
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The GB men’s eight is significantly changed from the boat that won gold at the 2016 Olympics, but the crew laid down a statement of intent by comfortably beating Romania, Holland, Germany and Italy.
The German crew led at the halfway stage after a fast start, but the cox Henry Fieldman, the stroke Tom Ford, James Rudkin, Ollie Wynne-Griffith, Charlie Elwes, Mo Sbihi, Tom George, Jacob Dawson and the bow Josh Bugajski breezed past the 2019 world champions and held off a fightback from Romania to cross the line half a length in front.
The crew may be inexperienced but, with George, Sbihi, Elwes and Wynne-Griffith in the centre of the boat, many consider the GB eight to be one of the most powerful in British history, and they are now among the favourites to win gold in Tokyo. “The Germans have been the lead crew since 2009,” Sbihi said. “They have been the crew we have always tried to chase. We were quietly confident this time last year [when the European Championships were cancelled because of the pandemic] and it was nice to put a marker down against them. But we also understand this is just European Champs.”
Ollie Cook, Matt Rossiter, Rory Gibbs and Sholto Carnegie cruised to gold in the men’s four by beating Romania by nearly two seconds.
