Brothers row to national succss
Gold and silver for Donnington oarsmen
DONNINGTON rowing brothers George and Matthew Rossiter were among the medals in the British Senior Championships staged at Nottingham’s National Water Sports Centre at Holme Pierrepont.
They joined Britain’s Rio Olympic winners for the two-day event that saw no winding down with 25 new records set during the regatta.
George Rossiter repeated his success in the Open 8+ in which his Leander crew claimed the gold ahead of Oxford Brookes in a repeat of the 2015 one-two that saw Rossiter's boat beat the previous record by more than a second to cover the two kilometres in 5 minutes 36.50 seconds.
Elder brother Matthew, the former world under-23 champion, was not in the winning eight this year but took a silver in the men's coxless fours on Saturday; also competing for Henley's Leander club.
That race saw another record go as ISIS A took the gold in 6:03.17, just 1.66 seconds ahead of Rossiter and his crew, both finishing well ahead of the rest of the field with ISIS B taking the bronze medal a further 6.34 seconds adrift.
That was as good as it got for the local contingent however, as last year's double gold-medalist George Francis just made it into the quadruples sculls crew for Imperial College in the absence of Mathilda Hodgkins-Byrne.
They started well enough with third place in the time trial behind Tideway Scullers and Leander, and progressed through the semi-finals comfortably enough by
finishing second to Tideway with both crews under the previous record time and separated by less than a second.
But the final saw Leander take the title ahead of Scullers with Edinburgh University third and Imperial having something of a disaster as they finished in last place.
Also having somewhat of a disaster was Katie Metalli's Oxford Brookes B boat in the women's University eights, which started with two crew members having to withdraw and one being hospitalised due to illness on the Friday before the championships.
The nightmare continued as they finished outside the top 12 in the time trial, their 15th place meaning they missed to chance to make the A or B finals having won the latter in 2015. It was little consolation that they were only 0.8 seconds away from making the cut, but it meant that they had to fight even to make the C final.
They finished second to Newcastle and ahead of Durham in the semi-final, but left Newcastle in their wake in the final to finish second to Oxford University to finish sixth overall in the University event with Cambridge taking the title ahead of University of London and two more Cambridge crews.
