Golden Saturday for GB’S rowing stars at the Euros
Great Britain’s rowers enjoyed a golden run with four titles and three other medals at the European Championships in Munich, where there was also more success in gymnastics, cycling and BMX freestyle.
Heidi Long, Rowan Mckellar, Sam Redgrave and Rebecca Shorten delivered gold at Oberschleissheim with a dominant display in the women’s four ahead of Ireland with Romania taking bronze.
The men’s four of Sam Nunn, Will Stewart, Matt Aldridge and Freddie Davidson also claimed the European title, with the Netherlands taking silver and Romania bronze.
The women’s quadruple sculls team of Lucy Glover, Jess Leyden, Lola Anderson and Georgie Brayshaw produced another golden run, beating the Netherlands and Ukraine.
It was Britain’s first women’s quad gold medal in more than 10 years. “We’ve worked so hard for this,” Leyden said.
“We have changed what we needed to change. We have all committed to our training and racing, it is really paying off.”
Britain had failed to win an Olympic gold medal in Tokyo, but claimed another European title in the men’s eight, who beat the Netherlands with Italy taking bronze.
Earlier, there was a silver for both women’s pair Emily Ford and Esme Booth as well as Ollie Wynne-griffith and Tom George in the men’s event while para-rower Benjamin Pritchard won bronze in the PR1 men’s single sculls.
Britain now sit top of the rowing medal table, with four more finals to race on Sunday.
Over in the Olympiahalle, Alice Kinsella collected another European silver medal in the women’s gymnastics team event.
Kinsella won two golds and a bronze at the Commonwealth Games and continued her superb run of form with European silver in Friday’s all-around final.
Yesterday’s team competition saw Kinsella, Georgia-mae Fenton, Ondine Achampong, Jennifer Gadirova and Jessica Gadirova score a total of 161.164 points to seal second place as Italy took gold with hosts Germany winning bronze.
In the BMX freestyle at the Olympiapark, a fine display from Kieran Reilly saw him claim a silver medal with a best score of 92.10 as Frenchman Anthony Jeanjean successfully defended his European title with 93.60 in his second run.
On the track, Pfeiffer Georgi won silver in the women’s elimination race as Lotte Kopecky took gold for Belgium, the event having earlier seen two crashes.
Josie Knight, though, lost to Italian Vittoria Guazzini for bronze in the women’s individual pursuit, while it was also fourth place for Charlie Tanfield, who had just missed out on the gold medal race, as Manlio Moro secured his place on the podium.
Jack Carlin, who won a bronze medal in the individual sprint and a silver in keirin for Scotland at the Commonwealth Games, qualified for the semi-finals of the men’s sprint along with Hamish Turnbull.