Evesham Rowing Club

Evesham Rowing Club's Project Oarsome children proudly displayed their talents in front of a packed regatta enclosure at the recent Supersprint Rowing Grand Prix, which was held on the waters of Dorney Lake, near Windsor.

The crowds were there to welcome home the successful Olympic coxless four crew of Steve Redgrave, Tim Foster, James Cracknell and Matthew Pinsent, but were entertained in the lunch hour with an excellent display of oarsmanship from the Evesham juniors.

Project Oarsome, a scheme which allows schoolchildren to row when otherwise the opportunity would not have been available, is run in over 50 clubs up and down the country and over a third of these were represented at Dorney Lake.

It was therefore a great victory and testament to the hard work put in by parents and club volunteers, when the crew of Tim Messant, Tizzy Shrimpton, Vicky Dyster, Kate Wilkinson, Sarah Bigg and Krysia Bialosiewicz teamed up with two Bewdley rowers to win the technical section on individual de-rigging and rigging a boat and gaining second spot in the team event.

The coaching section required the team to row 400 metres exactly on an ergometer within a specified time frame. The team split into two crews and posted 399 and 405 metres to finish fourth.

The fun event was the relay obstacle course which involved a single, a double and a quadruple sculls. Kate Wilkinson led the team off and was first round the buoy.

She then had to stand up in the boat and wave to the crowd before completing the course, well ahead of her opponents.

The Bewdley double sculls unfortunately encountered steering problems and left the remainder of the team too much to make up on the final leg.

However, fifth overall was a creditable result and the reward was the opportunity to get Steve Redgrave's autograph.

The crowd came to see a current Olympic champion and left having possibly seen one of the future.