1 February 2012: With less than six months to go before the start of the London Olympics Leander athletes are gearing themselves up for some tough selection battles in the weeks ahead.
As the only sport in which Britain has won gold at every Olympics since 1984 the pressure is on GB rowers to maintain that tradition and match their performance at the Beijing Olympics where they topped the rowing medal table for the first time since 1948. But even our current world champions are finding themselves under close scrutiny as the coaches determine which line-ups may stand the best chance of the ultimate prize – an Olympic gold medal.
Leander’s Matt Langridge, Alex Gregory and Rick Egington won the world title last year with Molesey’s Tom James in the men’s four. But when Britain’s strongest oarsmen - Pete Reed and Andy Triggs-Hodge - won their third successive silver behind New Zealand in the pair everyone was asking the same question. Could the two men bring added strength to the four or even the silver medal eight to bring greater chance of success in August?
It’s not just the men who are facing increasing pressure - with so much strength in depth the women’s sweep squad are also having to work hard to maintain their place.
Among them is Lou Reeve, who qualified to race the women’s pair, partnered by Olivia Whitlam, at the Beijing Olympics, where they reached the final.
Reeve is one of four Leander athletes who competed in the eight on Lake Bled, where a bronze medal ensured them a qualifying place for the London Games. But international rowing rules stipulate that only the boat qualifies, and now the race is on to establish which athletes will occupy the seats in each of the thirteen boat classes for which GB has already claimed a place at the Games.
All the GB rowers were back at their UK training base at the six-months-to-go marker. They have recently been to overseas camps in South Africa (men's squad) and Portugal (women and lightweights) to get consistency of training away from recent blustery conditions at home.
Leander sculler Matt Wells, a veteran of every Games since Sydney 2000 was upbeat about the team’s prospects.
"Racing in front of a home crowd is an enticing prospect. Before that time, though, we've got a big job to do every day in training so that we can make all that hard work pay off when it counts in August" he said.
