Latymer girls row to victory at Henley Royal Regatta

Latymer’s A quad sculled to a decisive victory in the Diamond Jubilee Challenge Cup at Henley-upon-Thames on Sunday 7^th July.

The quad led from the outset against Headington School, the bronze-medal winners at National Schools’ Regatta.

Fifty-four crews entered the Diamond Jubilee event with qualifying races reducing the field to twenty, including three international crews.  The Latymer Upper School ‘B’ quad also qualified and raced phenomenally well through the week, decisively beating undefeated national champions from Australia Kinross Wolaroi School on day one before knocking out another seeded crew, Gloucester Rowing Club, on the Friday, and eventually losing to Henley Rowing Club ‘A’ after pushing them throughout a tight quarterfinal on Saturday morning.

On Saturday afternoon Latymer ‘A’ then faced the same Henley crew in the semi-finals, the winners of National Schools Regatta and one of the favourites for the event. However, Latymer ‘A’ produced a mature performance to row to a comfortable, if unexpected, win.

This set up Sunday’s final. Headington School were a strong crew and continued to push the Latymer girls all the way to the enclosures, but Latymer dominated, winning by 1&3/4 lengths. You can watch the final in full here

Other Latymerians competing at HRR this year included Henry Fieldman (2006) coxing the GB Mens 8+, Zach Youell (Captain, 2014) and Flynn Traeger (2018) both rowing for Thames RC, and Tom Phelps (Captain, 2016) rowing for Brown University.

Further Recent Successes

Henry Fieldman won silver, coxing the GB Mens 8+ at the European Rowing Championships in Lucerne 2nd June, 2019 (https://bit.ly/2NEr61I)

Five Latymerians competed in the 2019 US collegiate IRA and NCAA rowing championships:

–              Orlando Nixon (2015) sitting bow seat in the victorious Yale heavies men’s 8, winning gold: (https://bit.ly/2NS6Ids)

–              Georgia Hellard Timm (Captain, 2015) sitting 6 seat in the Princeton Tigers women’s lightweight 1st 8, taking silver

–              Tom Phelps winning the B final to come 7th overall stroking Brown’s 1st 8

–              Nick Mayhew (Captain, 2017) coming 10th overall sitting bow seat in Stanford’s 1st 8

–              Also competing in NCAA Olivia von Stauffenberg (2018) for Duke

Ben Freeman (2015) was named University of London Sportsman of the Year 2019 following his U23 silver medal in the Men’s 8+ in the Rowing World Championships in Poznan last year. 

Author: Karen Dove