Sir David Tanner Congratulates Athletes on Summer Success

At the end of February GB rowing teams Performance Director, Sir David Tanner CBE, visited Newcastle University Boat Club to talk to the athletes about their training and performance, as well as presenting awards to the seven athletes who represented Great Britain last summer.

Sir David spoke to the students about GB Rowing’s plans for the next Olympiad, and the way in which university rowing at High Performance centres such as NUBC can contribute to this. He then went onto present awards on behalf of GB Rowing to the Newcastle athletes who attended the World U23 Championships and FISU Rowing Championships 2016. NUBC had a hugely successful summer of international representation, with the seven athletes winning 2 gold and 3 silver medals over the two events.

In the visit, Sir David was taken to both the university sports centre and the Newcastle University Boat Club at Newburn, where he congratulated the club for it’s excellent training programme and the strong performances it is consistently producing. The students found his talk about the development of GB Rowing very inspiring and it gave them an opportunity to discuss the future of international rowing and how it is changing.

From left to right: Ollie Varley, Oli Knight, James Robson, Angelo Savarino, Sir David Tanner, Emily Ford, Sasha Adwani, Alex Haynes
International Representation Awards:

World U23 Championships 2016
Ollie Varley – Gold MLW4x
James Rudkin – Silver M4-
Emily Ford – Silver W8+
Sasha Adwani – Silver W8+

FISU Rowing Championships 2016
Oli Knight – Gold M4-
James Robson & Alex Haynes – M2-

Written by Kelsey Stoddart