Australian National Rowing Championships

WAIS Olympians Todd Skipworth and Ben Cureton have come away with a silver medal from the men’s lightweight pair A Final at the National Rowing Championships in Adelaide.

The WA duo was beaten by reigning national champions Sam Beltz and Anthony Edwards, after the Tasmanian pair clocked a winning time of 6:53.48mins to finish a boat length clear of their national teammates.

Fellow WAIS lightweight pair Ross Brown and Perry Ward produced a spirited row to win the B Final at West Lakes.

There were some impressive results in U23 ranks, with AIS based WAIS scholarship holder Alex Hagan and her Queensland partner Jessica Hall winning the women’s double scull in a time of 7:39.79. Hagan also claimed second place in U23 women’s single scull A Final behind Canberra’s Amy Fowler. WAIS athlete Nat Bale finished third in the open age B Final for the women’s single scull.

WAIS young gun Hannah Jansen produced a strong performance to win the A Final of the U23 women’s lightweight single scull, finishing more than five seconds clear of second place.

At Sunday’s Interstate Regatta, the prestigious King’s and Queen’s Cups for men and women respectively were won by NSW (King’s Cup) and Victoria (Queen’s Cup). In the men’s lightweight four Penrith Cup, Todd Skipworth, Ben Cureton, Perry Ward and Ross Brown were edged out by the Tasmanian crew.

Tom Gibson – who coxed the Tasmanian crew – stated that his crew knew they were in for a tough test and were prepared to do the hard work to get the result over WA.

“They were really tricky conditions today and we were focussed on not making mistakes,” Gibson said. “We know the Western Australian boys always go really really hard out at the start so we knew we had to get our nose ahead, particularly in these conditions.”

“We did that in the first 500 so that was good. We also knew we had to be faster through the middle 1000 of the race because they always come home pretty hard. We inched away and carried the day. It was a good row.”