In a year that saw the 40th anniversary of women’s rowing joining the Olympic programme, it was fitting that the GB Rowing Team should mark the occasion with three pieces of history at the Rio 2016 Games.

Four years after becoming the first British female rowers to win an Olympic gold medal, the women’s pair of Helen Glover and Heather Stanning became the first to successfully defend their title as they stormed to victory on the Lagoa Rodrigo de Freitas.

Katie Greves, Melanie Wilson, Frances Houghton, Polly Swann, Jess Eddie, Olivia Carnegie-Brown, Karen Bennett, Zoe Lee and cox Zoe de Toledo became the first GB women’s eight to stand on an Olympic podium after taking silver in a thrilling final.

And Katherine Grainger became Britain’s most decorated female Olympian of all time when she and Vicky Thornley produced a performance of true grit and determination to win silver in the women’s double scull.

That was Grainger’s fifth medal from as many Games, a 16-year period that has contained a number of milestone moments for GB’s women on the Olympic stage.

The silver that Grainger won in the quadruple scull at the Sydney 2000 Games with Gillian Lindsay and the Batten sisters, Guin and Miriam, was a first-ever Olympic medal for British women.

Athens 2004 saw three of the four women’s boats that qualified for the Games come away with a medal. Grainger again won silver, this time in the pair with Cath Bishop; Alison Mowbray, Debbie Flood, Frances Houghton – who is also now a five-time Olympian – and Rebecca Romero matched that achievement in the quad; and Sarah Winckless and Elise Laverick won the first of four successive women’s doubles medals for GB as they took bronze.

Laverick won another bronze in the double at Beijing 2008 with Anna Watkins (nee Bebington), while Grainger again had to settle for silver in the quad along with Annie Vernon, Flood and Houghton.

Grainger’s long-awaited golden moment finally arrived at London 2012 as she won an emotional Olympic title with Watkins in the double. That was the second gold of the regatta for GB’s women, following on from that unforgettable breakthrough success by Glover and Stanning in the pair.

And there was more success to come at Eton Dorney as Kat Copeland and Sophie Hosking secured a first-ever medal for GB’s lightweight women – gold in the double scull to the delight of the home crowd.

Pioneering the way for these achievements were the first British female Olympic rowers back at the Montreal Games in 1976. Linda Clark and Beryl Crockford (nee Mitchell) – who sadly passed away recently – raced in the pair, finishing tenth, while Gillian Webb, Pauline Bird-Hart, Clare Grove, Diana Bishop and cox Pauline Wright were eighth in the coxed four.

All women’s races were over 1km at that stage and it wasn’t until the Seoul Games of 1988 that the racing distance was doubled to match the men’s competition.

The current women’s Olympic programme – pair, eight, single, double, quad and lightweight double – was first established at the Atlanta 1996 Games but there are proposals for it to be expanded in Tokyo 2020 as part of the International Olympic Committee’s (IOC) drive to implement gender participation equality across all sports.

Forty per cent of the 550 rowers that competed at the Rio 2016 Olympics were female, the highest level yet, and that would increase to 50-50 should the new, gender-balanced Olympic rowing programme be introduced. That will be voted on in February 2017 during an Extraordinary Congress of FISU, World Rowing’s governing body.

The Paralympic Games already has gender participation equality, with two of the four boat classes made up of mixed crews – the legs-trunk-arms mixed coxed four and the trunk-arms mixed double sculls.

The recent Rio 2016 Games saw all four British women rowers return with gold medals after magnificent performances – indeed, including the para-canoeists, every GB woman who competed on the Lagoa that week was crowned as champion.

Pamela Relph became the first woman to successfully defend a Paralympic rowing title as she, Grace Clough, Daniel Brown, James Fox and cox Oliver James claimed mixed coxed four victory in style. She had been joined in the winning boat four years earlier in London by Naomi Riches, David Smith, James Roe and cox Lily van den Broecke.

The two other Rio rowing champions had previously represented their country in other sports – Lauren Rowles, a track athlete until just 18 months before Rio, dominated the TA mixed double sculls final with Laurence Whiteley, while Rachel Morris produced a remarkable surge through the field to win the arm-shoulders women’s single scull.

Morris had been crowned as Paralympic champion in hand-cycling at Beijing 2008, the Games that saw para-rowing make its Paralympics debut and Helene Raynsford make history by winning the first-ever arm-shoulders women’s single scull title. There were also bronze medals that year for Riches and Vicky Hansford in the mixed coxed four alongside Alastair McKean, James Morgan and cox Alan Sherman.

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Rachel Morris started the gold rush when she turned an appalling start, as she termed it, into a final 350m surge in the arms-shoulders single scull to add Paralympic rowing gold to the gold she won in cycling in 2008.

Tom Aggar produced a fiercely determined performance to add bronze in the equivalent men’s event, holding off the 2012 Paralympic Champion from China in a race won by the Ukraine.

c. Simon Way

Lauren Rowles and Laurence Whiteley lived up to the promise they showed in winning their heat in a World Best Time to win gold in the mixed double scull.

Pamela Relph became a back-to-back Paralympic Champion in the mixed coxed four when she and Grace Clough, Daniel Brown, James Fox and cox Oliver James brought home gold in the final race of a fabulous 2016 for the GB Rowing Team.

Grace Clough, Dan Brown, Pamela Relph, cox Oliver James and James Fox won LTA mixed coxed four gold at the Rio 2016 Paralympic Games

Sir David Tanner, GB Rowing Team Performance Director, said: “Today has been exceptional for our programme. To be top of the medal table was our first objective and we are undisputed leaders of that.

“Last year at World Championships we showed the standard of our squad by getting three silvers and a gold and we have converted two of those silvers to golds here. That’s no discredit toTom Aggar who got a great bronze. I’m proud of the rowers.

“As ever I’m deeply grateful to the National Lottery without which none of this would be possible.”

Click on the expander boxes below for race reports, reaction and results in full.

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Rachel Morris will be the first GB rower to race on the Lagoa de Freitas tomorrow at the 2016 Paralympic Games when her heat of the arms-shoulders women’s single scull starts at 12.50 BST.

Morris is drawn in lane 1 in a heat which features former World Champion, 2015 World finalist and local favourite Claudia Santos of Brazil.

The Guildford rower has made remarkable progress since transferring to the sport from hand-cycling in early 2013 and whilst she admitted to always having a few pre-race nerves she said: “I will focus on the moment and the processes and only worry about my own performance”.

She also had praise for the Rio set-up:   “The Village and the Lagoa venue are both really top quality and the Rio committee have done a fantastic job getting everything ready for us”.

Tom Aggar races in the equivalent men’s event and is also a World silver medallist and 2008 Paralympic Champion but underlined the progress made by the sport since winning that inaugural Paralympic gold in Beijing.

He said:   “It’s crazy, I was only thinking the other day that I am one of the few survivors of the Beijing Games in terms of athletes.  The sport has changed dramatically since then. The standards just to qualify are pretty high and to medal the standard has moved on too.

“The sport has become more professional across all the events and the bandings are so much tighter. Medals are so much more hard fought and the races are much closer so from a spectator point of view, it is exciting racing to watch.  But when you are out there it’s really stroke by stroke, side by side, top racing”.

The Londoner races in heat two at 13.30 BST and will line up on the start line with  the reigning World Champion, Erik Horrie of Australia, with only one place available in Sunday’s final and all other contenders racing a repechage on Saturday.

Heat two of the trunk-arms mixed double scull could also be a GB v Australia affair.  Lauren Rowles and Laurence Whiteley are World silver medallists but a very new crew on the international scene.

Gavin Bellis and Kathryn Ross beat the GB duo by just under a second in France last year to take World gold setting the scene for an exciting heat tomorrow including contenders from China and the Ukraine. Only one crew can go through to the finals.

Rowles only took up rowing in early 2015 after  switching from athletics.  She has also juggled A level studies this year with training for Rio.

Recently she talked of  her passion for her “new” sport and said:  “The first moment that I got in a boat I knew that it was for me. It was amazing, I loved the sense of freedom and, maybe, if I’d carried on with athletics I would have made progress but this the sport for me”.

Pamela Relph, Grace Clough, Daniel Brown, James Fox and cox Oliver James are the World Champions in the mixed coxed four and will keep a wary eye on China and South Africa who could prove the main opposition in the heat.  They will be favourites, though, to move into Sunday’s final direct.

Channel 4 will carry a highlights package of tomorrow’s racing in their afternoon show between 16.00 – 19.00 BST.  Fans can follow the action through live graphics on the www.worldrowing.com

Results will be posted on Twitter via @gbrowingteam

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Tom Aggar, competing at his third Paralympic Games in Rio in the men’s single scull (ASM1x) having won gold at Beijing 2008, says that he and his rowing team-mates have settled in well to the Athletes Village and the venue.

“We have settled in well and made a good transition into the Village from our training camps. I feel pretty good and relaxed and we are impressed with what Rio has had to offer so far”, he said.

Pamela Relph, defending champion in the mixed para-rowing coxed four (LTAMix4+), was also effusive in her praise this morning.

She said: “It’s been amazing.  It has been much, much better and much smoother than we were all expecting. I think there were some horror stories going around but we have had a very smooth run-in.

“We are really happy with the village. It’s a beautiful, beautiful village.  It’s really well designed and thought out and we have a stunning venue. I think we have hit the jackpot with our competition venue”

First-time Paralympian Grace Clough, competing in the same crew as Relph, also talked of the relaxed focus on training when she said:  “Personally I haven’t thought about racing yet.  I’m just taking it all in.  Maybe in a few days the nerves will start to kick in but not yet”.

Relph also countered any suggestion of mounting pressure in defending GB’s crown in the mixed coxed para-rowing four when she said:  “It’s definitely been going through my mind, the possibility of winning back to back gold medals but, as Grace [Clough] has said already, we are in such a lucky position to be able to be focussed as a crew but really relaxed as well”.

Racing starts in Rio on Friday running from 12.30 to 14.30 BST with heats in all four boat classes featuring GB contenders – the men’s and women’s single sculls, the mixed double scull and the mixed coxed four.

Details of Channel 4 TV coverage are to follow.

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The arms-only single sculler, who won silver at the 2015 Worlds, came home in a fast time. Her performance came in the teeth of conditions that were on the cusp of rowable.

“Rachel was really exceptional today and raced superbly. She probably had the worst of the conditions, too”, said the GB Rowing Team lead para-rowing coach, Tom Dyson.

Morris transferred from hand-cycling to rowing as recently as late 2013, having won Paralympic gold at Beijing 2008 in her previous sport.

Today she topped a list which saw Laurence Whiteley, of Northallerton, from the 2015 Worlds silver medal trunk-arms double scull on a calculation based on the gold medal time in Rio. HIs double scull partner, Lauren Rowles, still only 17 and a recent convert from wheelchair track racing, was fourth.

Grace Clough, from Sheffield, and Aylesbury’s Pam Relph, World Champions in the mixed coxed four in France in September, teamed up in a women’s pair and put in a an eye-catching performance to take third slot on the rankings.

“That was one of the strongest LTA [legs, trunks, arms category] performances we have ever seen from a women’s pair”, said Dyson. “They were very quick”. Relph is also a reigning Paralympic Champion.

Tricky weather conditions meant that the assessment was truncated from the originally planned 2km time trial to a 1km course instead.

Six of GB’s top contenders were also unable to trial because of illness earlier this week in the squad – Tom Aggar, James Fox, Dan Brown, Scott Meenagh, Jordan Beecher and Sam Murray were all ruled out on medical grounds.

TOP FOUR FINISHERS

Rachel Morris
Laurence Whiteley
Grace Glough and Pam Relph
Lauren Rowles

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GB ROWING TEAM MEDALLISTS – 2015 WORLD CHAMPIONSHIPS PARA-ROWING EVENTS

GOLD

PARA-ROWING

MIXED

Coxed four (LTA 4+)

Grace Clough (Nottingham RC/Sheffield/21.06.91)
Daniel Brown (Upper Thames BC/Reading/29.11.82)
Pamela Relph (Leander Club/Aylesbury/14.11.89)
James Fox (Univ of London/Peterborough/02.05.92)
Oliver James (cox) (Leander Club/Henley-on-Thames/05.01.90)
Coach: Tom Dyson

SILVER

Trunk/-arms double scull (TA2x)

Laurence Whiteley (Tees RC/Northallerton/29.08.91)
Lauren Rowles (Marlow RC/Birmingham/ 24.04.98)
Coach: Nick Baker

MEN

Arms/-shoulders single scull (ASM 1x)

Tom Aggar (Marlow RC/Maidenhead/24.05.84)
Coach: Nick Baker

WOMEN

Arms/-shoulders single scull (ASW 1x)

Rachel Morris (Guildford RC/Farnham/25.04.79)
Coach: Tom Dyson

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CONTACT DETAILS

For background information about the The GB Rowing Team contact the Press office via comms@gbrowingteam.org.uk or 07831 755351

For picture requests please contact:  GBRTpressoffice@gbrowingteam.org.uk

GB Rowing Team website, including full rower biogs: www.gbrowingteam.org.uk

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The GB mixed coxed four won Paralympic rowing gold on home water at Eton Dorney to end an emotional day on a high note.

The ParalympicsGB rowers had qualified all three crews for the medal finals but there was a shock start for the team and the crowd when reigning World and Paralympic Champion Tom Aggar finished fourth, outside the medals, in the Arms and Shoulders only single scull behind China, Australia and Russia.

The Trunk and Arms mixed double of Army Captain Nick Beighton and Sam Scowen – who only started racing together last year – produced a great performance to also finish fourth, just two-tenths of a second behind the USA in bronze, with the Chinese double winning gold and France silver.

Then came the four. Their German rivals set a new World Best Time of 3:15.91 in the heats and took the lead in the final.

But the British crew of Pamela Relph, Naomi Riches, David Smith, James Roe and cox Lily van den Broecke reeled them in and hit the front just before they started passing the grandstands for a memorable, raucous finish to the Paralympic regatta.

The GB Rowing Squad is supported by the National Lottery.

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