Rory motion surges to China water scorcher

1:41pm Saturday 28th July 2007

ST PETER'S School pupil Rory MacLeod has been selected to row in the Great Britain Junior (Under-18) eight - the flagship event of the World Rowing Junior Championships.

Rory will be competing with rowers from more than 50 nations in the World Championships in Beijing at the beginning of next month.

The event will be used to test the new rowing course for next year's Olympic Games.

The 11-month period of training and trials started in September 2006 with 160 boys from across the country.

Since then, there have been ten separate land and water trials. At each trial, numbers have been reduced until 50 boys were invited to the final trial at the National Watersports Centre, Nottingham.

For five gruelling days, the boys raced ten races per day on the windy Nottingham International course.

Numbers were reduced, leaving the best to form the team. There was then further testing within that team to determine who rowed in which boat class.

MacLeod ended up as third overall, which earned him a place in the eight.

Last year, he stroked the Great Britain eight, which won a silver medal in the Junior European Championships, in Holland.

The task will be much harder this year, however, with the USA, Romania, Germany and New Zealand always putting their best boys into the eights event.

St Peter's pupils have earned five other Great Britain World Championship rowing vests in the last nine years - three girls and two boys. In addition, their rowers have represented Great Britain 22 times over the same period.

The whole Great Britain team has already moved to Chester, where it has spent the week training, which will be followed by a further week at the Caversham rowing course, near Reading.

From there, the team flies out to China for ten days training and acclimatisation before the opening ceremony.

Racing starts with heats on August 8 and 9, with semi-finals on August 10.

Training so far shows that the crew has the potential to make the final on Saturday, August 11.

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