Scottish Indoor Rowing Championship
Sunday 29th January 2012
Location: Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh
Organiser: Scottish Rowing
Contact: Graeme Cunningham
Web: www.sirc2012.notlong.com/
Email: graeme.cunningham@scottish-rowing.org.uk
Entries close: Saturday 21st January 2012
2011 Event Report
The 2011 Scottish Indoor Rowing Championships returned to the Centre for Sport and Exercise at Heriot Watt University, Edinburgh with over 500 competitors competing in 38 races in 49 event categories. With many clubs unable able to train on the water due to the harsh winter, this year’s championships carried extra impetus.
Virtually every Scottish rowing club was represented and athletes travelled from throughout the UK and as far afield as Chicago, USA and St Petersburg Russia. Talkin Tarn ARC, Berwick ARC and Southampton Solent University BC brought sizable entries from south of the border.
The day’s racing started at 9:30 with the junior events. The first race saw wins in the Under 11 categories for Aaron Bell-O’Hare and Saskia Parsons both racing in their first competition and representing the Backchat Youth Project. The Helensburgh based group offers a wide range of activities with one of the key focuses to promote healthy living.
11 year old Megan Jephcote will have been happy on her long journey back to Ross-on-Wye as she improved on her silver medal in 2010 to win Gold. Jan Meinicke of Strathclyde Park RC posted an amazing distance of 905m in the 3 minutes Boy’s Under 14 Race.
There was a 1-2 finish for the Glasgow Academy pair of Ross Urquart and Ronan Murphy in boy’s Under 19 Hwt.
Kieran Brown (Clydesdale ARC) won the Boy’s Under 19 Lwt Category but the main excitement was in the race for silver between Tome Claxton (Loch Lomond RC) and Gregor Hall (Heriot Watt Uni BC). In the end, nothing could separate them and they both finished with a time of 6:57.9.
The Scottish Championships is unique on the Indoor Rowing Circuit in the range of race distances on offer. The Senior Age Group categories are all raced over 1000m, which encourages close, exciting racing. 72 year-old Eric Davison from Fraserburgh, the Championships oldest competitor, won bronze in the Men’s Over 60 Hwt.
Shaun Callagahan representing Steepholme Pirates had a successful championships winning Gold in Lwt 40-49 and Bronze in the Open Hwt Sprint. It was a busy weekend for Shaun who had competed in the European Indoor Rowing Championships in France only the day before.
The Russian duo of Sergey Suvorov and Evgeny Trofimov also competed at the European Championships and the pair would go on to have a highly successful day in Edinburgh winning 5 medals in total. As well as their individual races they would also team up with Aberdeen BC’s Robert Strachan and Jack Montgomery to form “Edinburgh International” to race in the Men’s Open Team Race.
The standard of the men’s Hwt 30-39 age group was extremely high. Sergey Suvorov, Phil Craze (Team AEGON), and Barry Grieg (Royal Navy IRC) had all previously won medals at the SIRC. The Gold went to Sergey in a blistering time of 2:56.1 ahead of Phil and then Barry.
The Men’s Open Hwt event featured both the Silver and Bronze medallists from the 2010 Championships in the shape of Evgeny Trofimov and Robert Strachan. The event was won by Sean Corrigall in 6:07.0, the fastest 2k of the day. 21 year-old Sean, originally from Orkney but now rowing at Reading Uni RC as part of the GB Rowing Team World Class Start programme, also won the Championships final event the Men’s Open Hwt 500m sprint.
Ruth Dunn from Glasgow Uni was the fastest female competitor of the day with a time of 7:06.1 in the Women’s Open Hwt ahead of Iona Riley (Aberdeen BC) and Catriona Bain (Aberdeen Uni). Beth McMaster pipped her Glasgow RC team mate Joanna Thomson to win the Open Lwt event.
Clydesdale’s Gavin Murty was a comfortable winner in the Men’s Open Lwt with a time of 6:27.1 ahead of the Heriot Watt duo of James Scott and Sebastian Pocachard. James would pick up another Silver in the Open Lwt Sprint, which was won by Andy Hammond of Southampton Solent Uni.
Defending champions Team AEGON faced tough competition in the Men’s Team from the newly formed ‘Edinburgh International’. In a stroke for stroke race Team AEGON took the victory in 5:25.2 just 1.2s ahead of the composite team.
In the women’s team event, Clydesdale ARC won Gold ahead of Berwick ARC and Team AEGON.
The Championships also incorporated the Scottish University Indoor Rowing Championships with the final results of the Victor Ludorum being:
- =1 Edinburgh 65
- =1 Heriot Watt 65
- 3 Glasgow 37
- 4 Aberdeen 22
- 5 Robert Gordon 6
- 6 Stirling 5
- 7 Strathclyde 3
Scottish Rowing would like to express their thanks to all the volunteers, spectators and competitors for a great day of racing.
Photographs are available from: http://cofd.co.uk/images/Ergo_Champs/Ergo%20Champs%202011/ErgCh11.html and http://www.darrochphotography.ifp3.com/
