Strathclyde Park members triumph at the Henley Women’s Regatta

Qualifying for an event at the regatta is often an achievement in itself for any crew, but one Strathclyde Park athlete took that one step further.

Perri McCluskey (20), of the British Rowing World Class Start Programme and her crewmates from Nottingham RC led their Time Trial of the Aspirational Quadruple Sculls.

They then went on to win all four of their head to head races over the weekend convincingly.

Not only did they succeed in gaining SPRC’s first ever win at the regatta, and getting their names etched into history on The Chairman’s Trophy, but they also broke the course record by three seconds on their way to doing so!

Several other members of the club also participated, with Olivia Bell, 18, also of the World Class Start Programme competing in the highly competitive Junior Quadruple Sculls event as a part of a Scottish composite crew.

Again this crew qualified for the knockout stages of the regatta, drawing a seeded crew from Lea RC in the first round.

The feisty junior crew chased their opponents down the length of the course, only for the umpire to call an immediate re-row due to obstructive steering from the London crew.

Unfortunately for Olivia and her crew, they fell just short at the finish line of the re-row despite leading at several points through the race!

Several alumnae of the club also competed at the regatta, with Rosie Payne, 19, from Hamilton, making the semi-finals of the Aspirational Double Scull racing for her current club Robert Gordon University BC.

She only lost out to the eventual winners, a composite crew from Leicester RC & Shiplake College.

Jenny Ord (20), also of Hamilton, was competing in the Lightweight Aspirational Single Scull for current club Aberdeen BC.

Jenny stormed to third place in a hotly contested Time Trial, but was only a few feet short of victory in the quarter-finals against her Oxford University opponent.