Historic Win at Henley for Northampton Rowing Club
Northampton Rowing Club won the Raynor Cup for Junior double sculls at the prestigious Henley Women's Regatta at the weekend.
This is the first time in the club's 48 year history, that it has won at one of Britain's major regattas.
Henley Women's Regatta is the premier regatta in the country for women's crews and attracts the best crews in Britain as well as many overseas crews, including Germany, the Netherlands and USA. The girls were rowing in a new boat called 'Let Your Light Shine', kindly donated to the club by the Laing Trust.
Teagan Smith from Northampton paired up with Seren Page from Nottingham to compete in the junior under 18 double sculls event. Their first race along the course was a time trial against all the other entries to reduce the field to 16 crews from the 34 entries. This time trial set the scene for the weekend with Northampton/Nottingham winning with a time of 5mins 12.9 secs on the slightly shorter 1500m course. This was the fastest double sculling time of the day, apart from a very impressive senior women's crew from Reading University.
Following on from this impressive result on Saturday morning, Northampton/Nottingham went on to beat Molesey RC in the afternoon with an easily verdict, to progress to Sunday's racing. They then beat Sir Steve Redgrave's old club, Marlow RC, by three and a half lengths and then dispatched Hartbury College and University with an easily verdict, to set up a final against Walton-on-Thames RC.
Teagan and Seren started the final strongly and by halfway were leading by 2 clear lengths. Normally this would be a large enough lead to guarantee a victory. However, Walton hadn't quite read the script and with 250m to go produced a spirited burst. Although giving Teagan and Seren a shock, Walton couldn't quite make up the deficit, leaving Northampton/Nottingham to win by just under half a length.
Teagan will now move on to GB trials in the hope of being selected for the under 19 World Championships in Lithuania.