Holders: Chinese National Rowing Team, China
Entries: 14
Depending on the idiosyncrasies of the draw this should come down to a Great Britain versus Canada on Sunday.
Great Britain, racing as Leicester Rowing Club and Leander, will be the overwhelming favourites. They raced at the Varese World Cup last weekend winning a silver medal just 0.5 seconds behind the Olympic and world champions from China and setting a new British record of 6:09.3 in the process. The crew is Lauren Henry, Hannah Scott, Lola Anderson and Georgie Brayshaw. The British also won bronze at the European Championships earlier this season (with a slightly tweaked line-up). Brayshaw was in the quad that won European gold in 2022 and Scott raced the quad at the Tokyo Olympics.
Canada, racing as Shawnigan Lake School, also raced at the Varese World Cup last weekend, finishing ninth. Their crew is anchored around the highly experienced Carling Zeeman. She finished eighth in the W1X at the Tokyo Olympics and was tenth in Rio. She joins U23 silver medallists Grace Vandenbroek and Elisa Bolinger along with long-standing national team member Shannon Kennedy (16th in the W1X in 2022). This is a new project for the Canadian team, whose first race was Varese, so will be looking to get more races under their belt in Henley ahead of the Lucerne World Cup.
One interesting contest, if the draw is compliant, could be seeing two Dutch quads go head-to-head. Delftsche Studenten Roeivereeniging Laga and Amsterdamsche Studenten Roeivereeniging Nereus are the reigning Dutch Champions. Their crew includes half of the reigning U23 World Champion BW4X, Femke Paulis and Lisa Bruijnincx along with 2021 European silver medallist Dieuwertje Den Besten and senior international Minke Holleboom. The second Dutch quad are the Netherlands U23 crew, racing as Hollandia Roeiclub. They have a third member of the gold medal U23 BW4x from 2022, Vera Sneijders along with U23 internationals Claire de Kok and Phaedra Van Der Molen. The final, and youngest member of the crew is Jente Jongsma. She was fifth in the JW1X at the U19 World Championships last season. The BW4X is the Netherlands priority boat for the upcoming U23 World Championships and given they are the reigning U23 Champions you can expect this quad to be pretty rapid.
All the other entries in the event are from British Clubs, the pick of which look to be the composite racing as Edinburgh University and Newcastle University and Leander Club’s ‘A’ crew. The Edinburgh/Newcastle composite are an U23 boat with Hannah Supple and Rachel Bradley who raced in the BW2X at the Wedau Regatta in Duisburg and reached the semi-final of the CH2X at Henley Women’s Regatta last weekend. They join Megan Knight and Molly Curry. Knight is a former U19 International and has just completed her freshman year at Stanford. Curry race in the U23 BW4x at the 2022 U23 European Championships (with Bradley) finishing 5th.
Leander Club’s ‘A’ crew won at both Wallingford and the Metropolitan regattas. Two of the crew, Susannah Dear and Lina Kuehn, won the Championship Quads at Henley Women’s Regatta last weekend. They join Princeton students Nicole Dunn (a winner of the Diamond Jubilee with Shiplake College) and Dutch junior international Anna Menke (who raced in the Princeton 2V at the NCAA’s).
Thames Rowing Club (Anna Smart, Katherine Watson, Rachel Heap and Sina Schaeffer) took bronze in Championship Quads at the Metropolitan Regatta and were beaten by Leander A in the semi-final of Henley Women’s Regatta last weekend.
Reading University won silver at the BUCS Championships earlier this season, and their crew split to race the open-weight and lightweight Championship doubles at Henley Women’s Regatta last weekend, Ellie Cooke and Finnola Stratton reaching the semi-finals of the W2X and Alex Grocock-Rego and Lara Brittain the semis of the LW2X.
Molesey Boat Club also raced at the Metropolitan Regatta and Henley Women’s Regatta. At the Met they picked up a silver medal and at Henley Women’s the crew of Heloise Wormieighton, Lisa Goossens, Holly Dunford and Ella Toa reached the final, losing to Leander by 1 ¾ lengths.
The remaining entries, De Montfort University, Leander Club ‘B’, Nottingham University and Thames Rowing Club ‘B’ all have to race qualifiers for the remaining two spots in the main draw. Leander Club ‘B’ will be confident of taking one of the spots, their crew of Laura Burton, Sophie Gray, Rosa Thompson and Sian Hinton were bronze medallists at Wallingford and the Metropolitan and they made the semi-finals at Henley Women’s. Thames Rowing Club ‘B’ will also be confident of securing one of the two spots available, their crew of Sarah Riches, Natalie Morgan, Clare Wood and Maja Drakenberghook were winners of the B-Final at the Metropolitan Regatta and made the Quarterfinals of Aspirational Quads at Henley Women’s Regatta.
Predictions
This should be a comfortable win for the GB W4X of Leicester Rowing Club and Leander, but it’ll be interesting to see if either of the Dutch or British club quads can give the Canadians a tough time in getting to the final.
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