Disability Sport Wales
Chwaraeon Anabledd Cymru

GOLD GOES TO JAMES AND SAM

Britain’s adaptive crews stole the late afternoon limelight in Munich by taking gold in all three events as well as a silver in the men’s single scull.

Tom Aggar, reigning Paralympic champion, began the medal rush. He eased past the fast-starting Ukrainian in his single scull final to take the lead after 450m and cruised on to win in 5:06.02. Andrew Houghton, making his debut at this level, quietly stuck to his stroke form and length and metre by metre also came up from third to push past the high-rating Ukrainain to take silver.

“I’m really pleased. This is the first big regatta since Beijing and it was good to put a big score on the board”, said Aggar who also paid tribute to his team-mate Houghton. “It’s been tough getting back into training since Beijing and it’s been good to have someone there every day as a reminder of how the standard is improving. That’s pushing me to improve as well”.

Houghton said: “It was a good race. I saw that the Ukrainian had a bit of pace in yesterday’s lane racing. So I made it my goal today to beat him”.

James Roberts and newcomer Samantha Scowen did not have the best of starts in the mixed adaptive double scull final. They allowed Poland to take a flying start before catching and passing them. From the halfway point they never looked like ceding the lead and won in 4:17.67.

“We had been planning to lead all the way” said Roberts. “Once we drew level we had a good race. The partnership is going well and to have to recover from a bad start and still win is a good sign”.

Scowen said: “I’m really pleased to have won gold at my first world cup regatta. I put in a few bad strokes at the start but it was just inexperience really”.

Next came the mixed adaptive coxed four, who have experienced some crew changes since winning bronze in Beijing last year. Dave Smith, a former international-level bobsleigher from Aviemore, and James Roe have teamed up with the more experienced Vicki Hansford and Naomi Riches in a boat steered by cox Rhiannon Jones.

The combination seems to be working. Today they got a fast start and took the lead early. By the finish they were over four seconds ahead of Germany, their nearest challengers with Ireland coming home third.

Riches said: “Everybody stepped up today and we got the result we’ve been striving for. It was nice to race against some new opposition. This crew is a powerful combination with a lot of potential”.

Dave Smith said: “That was the fastest start we’ve done. I’ve only been in the sport a few months and as a bobsleigher, I’m more used to sprinting so there’s been a lot of pain getting this far in rowing already but it’s been worth it”.

Roe said: “It’s been really nice to race here and we’ve definitely improved since Varese. It’s all coming together”.

Hansford said: “We couldn’t have executed the race better. I’m so excited because this is such a strong crew and we’ve really moved forward”.

Jones said: “It is great to win on my international debut. After 200m I was telling the crew that we were half a length up on the Germans and I couldn’t see anyone else”.

Adam Freeman Pask has begun to make medal-winning a habit in the international classes. He took a second world cup bronze medal of the year here in the lightweight single scull. A sign of his growing ambition was his disappointment at not winning silver in a race won by Duncan Grant of New Zealand with Ondrej Luzek taking silver.

“I would have liked a silver here”, he said afterwards. “But I had to go a little bit over my threshold to stay in contention in the middle of the race and I did not have enough at the end”.

It looked for 1800m as though he might just get that silver but Luzek bided his time and rowed through the British single sculler in the final 250m.

Earlier the second GB men’s four boat proved the potential they pack for the future with a solid performance to take second place in the afternoon’s B final of this event. Stroked by James Foad they gradually crept back up on the race-through leaders Croatia. In the dying few hundred metres they just couldn’t find the edge to push past and were second by just over a second in 6:23.77.

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