Latest news with #rowing
BBC News
21 hours ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Charity rowers eye Atlantic crossing record
A four-man team of rowers are looking to write their names into the history books and become the fastest group to row across the Atlantic Ocean. Jack Jarvis, David Bruce, Sam Edwards and Adam Radcliffe will row from New York all the way back to Southampton in an attempt to set a record. On Thursday evening they will embark on a 3,500-mile journey across the North Atlantic in a bid to break the 43-day world record for this route. They are doing this challenge to raise money for Head Up, a UK charity aimed at promoting mental health awareness for UK armed forces."Doing experiences like this can give you magical moments," Jarvis told BBC South Today."It takes a lot of grit but I love the real test of mental fortitude and there are incredible rewards out there like seeing the sunrises, sunsets and the wildlife."Having to deal with the test of being in the Atlantic Ocean It will help to be able to deal with the pressures of life and all it throws at you, it gives you those tools you need." Jarvis has previously taken part in extreme rowing. Back in 2022 he became the first person to row solo and unsupported from mainland Europe to mainland North America. The charity they are raising money for has a personal meaning to the team, of whom some have a military background. One of Bruce's close friends - a former Royal Marine who had been deployed to Afghanistan - took his life this year. "It is a charity close to all of our hearts," Jarvis added."Head Up help current and former members of the armed forces cope better with their mental health, it's a charity we really want to get behind."We're a really aligned group doing this. I met some of them through my military service and I met Adam online, we rode from the Bahamas to Miami before."They're a good group of lads and I'm really looking forward to this experience of rowing the Atlantic with them."
BBC News
a day ago
- Sport
- BBC News
Ex-parachute regiment officer Mike Ellicock sets rowing record
A former Parachute Regiment officer has set a new record for rowing solo around Great Ellicock, 50 and from Lewes, East Sussex, departed from his home town on 30 April and returned to the same spot, the John Harvey Tavern, on Wednesday evening, after completing the 1,820 mile (2,929km) journey in 49 Ellicock was aiming to raise £30,000 and awareness for the charity Support Our said he was "incredibly grateful to have been able to get around safely and so fast". He is also the first person to complete the journey via the Great said: "As a 25-year-old platoon commander, I was wounded in action during a hostage rescue in Sierra Leone but made a full recovery and subsequently had the privilege of commanding paratroopers on operations again before making a successful and rewarding transition into civilian life."Not all my former brothers in arms were so fortunate - and that's why I chose this challenge as a way to honour them and raise money for Support Our Paras." Mr Ellicock had previously completed the 125 mile (201km) Devizes to Westminster canoe 2013 he set a world record for running the London Marathon while carrying a 40lb (18kg) pack in just under three and a half hours.
RNZ News
2 days ago
- Sport
- RNZ News
What a shorter race at the Olympics means for New Zealand rowers
Rowing at the Tokyo Olympics Photo: Steve McArthur PHOTOSPORT New Zealand has a strong history in 1500 metres at the Olympics, but it's not in rowing. For the first and possibly only time, the Los Angeles 2028 rowing regatta will be raced over 1500 metres rather than the usual 2000 metres. Organisers of the games decided that the Olympic rowing regatta would be held at the Long Beach Marine Stadium, the venue for the 1932 Olympics. The other possibility was a site 110km away, but costs and impact on the environment made it a less desirable option. The problem with the Long Beach Stadium is that since 1932 a bridge has been built at one end while marinas have also been added, reducing the usable length to 1500m. At the time of the decision the World Rowing Federation said, "It will require some adaptation, for the athletes in the first place, but it shows our ability to adapt without changing the core nature of our sport." They felt that being closer to the city allowed the sport and fans to feel closer to the Olympics. So what does it means for New Zealand rowers? New Zealand has been one of the most successful nations at the last four Olympics and in Tokyo finished as the top ranked nation with three gold and two silver medals. Rowing New Zealand's GM of Performance Judith Hamilton said the plan was reluctantly agreed to at the time, but the decision did give everyone enough time to plan. "We do a number of in-house races at that distance so it's not an issue to us," Hamilton told RNZ. Will a change of race plan or athlete training be required? "The tactics and the strategy on how you attack a race will change so it's how we get our athletes used to that. "There will certainly be more emphasis on being powerful. Really efficient and higher rating athletes will probably have an advantage." The Marine Stadium Long Beach venue for the LA28 rowing regatta. Photo: SUPPLIED / LA28 However, there isn't anything that Rowing New Zealand will have to change immediately. "I'm not expecting we'll see that really until year three of the Olympic cycle (2027) when it comes to qualification." Even the final Olympic qualifying regatta which will be held in 2028 will be raced over 2000m. "So it's a little bit of an enigma but it has been well publicised so everyone knows what they're up for." Rowing is New Zealand's most successful sport at the Olympics with a total of 33 medals including 15 gold. The only medal won by New Zealand at the 1932 games in LA was in rowing, while New Zealand won a gold and bronze medal in the 1984 games in the city.
Telegraph
4 days ago
- Sport
- Telegraph
I rowed against ‘C' – the new MI6 chief Blaise Metreweli
The thing about rowing is that you are never really aware of what the people you row with – or against – do when they are not charging up and down the river. I woke up on Monday morning to discover that the new MI6 chief was a woman. 'Great!' I thought. 'And how very James Bond.' It wasn't until I saw pictures of Blaise Metreweli in her Cambridge University Women's Boat Club kit that I realised I had been racing against her for the past few years. While this particular race has only been running for four years, I think she's taken part in at least three of them, for Cambridge. She's really friendly, down-to-earth and very charming. With some of the Cambridge rowers there is still a hint of the old rivalry in relations post race. Obviously when we are out on the river we want to win, and some of them carry that with them afterwards, but not Blaise. Whether they've won or lost, she's always warm and approachable and, I sense, up for a laugh. She's not going to be a stuffy boss – far from it, she'll be a refreshing change. In 2024, we had a historically close race that ended in a dead heat (awarded to us, by one foot). Afterwards, as we had a drink and shared the hoisting of the trophy, I chatted to Blaise about what midlife rowing meant to us. We agreed that the sport was a chance to get away from all the other stresses of midlife and recreate those bonds we had when we were younger. Many of the older rowers have fairly high-powered jobs, and fit in training alongside. Despite that, I'm impressed she has managed to juggle her career in intelligence with such a committed rowing schedule. But it's no surprise to me that a rower has been promoted to such a high-level position. There are certain qualities that rowers possess that make us highly effective people. One is time management (albeit that messing about in boats always takes longer than you think it should). You can't possibly perform at work and on the river unless you strictly timetable your training. Another is determination. In the early Nineties, women's rowing was still very much a second-class sport. While our male counterparts had hundreds of thousands of pounds of sponsorship from the likes of Beefeater Gin, we celebrated when we were given a tiny portion of that for our kit. At Cambridge, Blaise will have experienced something similar. It makes you resolute and determined to overcome gender bias. Now she has. Then there is the determination required to push yourself to the max. That dead heat was such a fantastic example of midlife women refusing to say die, raging against the perception of 40 and 50-something women as irrelevant and invisible. When she takes over her post as 'C' from Sir Richard Moore on October 1, Metreweli, 47, will become the first woman to run MI6 in its 116-year history. As the only named member of the organisation, Britain's foreign intelligence chief has a dual role as an operational leader and a public figurehead. 'The historic appointment of Blaise Metreweli comes at a time when the work of our intelligence services has never been more vital,' said Sir Keir Starmer, the Prime Minister, adding that he was confident that 'Blaise will continue to provide the excellent leadership needed to defend our country and keep our people safe'. Tall and athletic, with cropped hair and striking blue eyes, Metreweli does not fit the stereotype of an intelligence chief. ' She's almost a female James Bond,' says one source. 'She's action-packed, she's urbane, she's charming, she's the right age. If you were going to cast a female Bond, you could do much worse.' A 'geek' who wanted to be a spy Her appointment marks the culmination of a remarkable ascent. Metreweli joined the service in 1999 after reading Anthropology at Pembroke College. (She is the third 'C' from Pembroke, after Sir Colin Figures and Sir Richard Dearlove). At Cambridge, Metreweli was part of the victorious Cambridge team in the 1997 Boat Race. She initially applied to be a diplomat before moving into the Secret Intelligence Service (SIS). She is said to speak excellent Arabic, and spent much of her early career in the Middle East, at a time when Britain was involved militarily in Afghanistan and Iraq. She is currently the director general of the 'Q' section – the gadget shop in James Bond – responsible for technology and innovation, and previously held other senior level director roles in MI5. 'Obviously [her gender] is historically significant, but she is a fantastic appointment in terms of her skill set and her career in SIS,' says Claire Hubbard-Hall, author of Her Secret Service: The Forgotten Women of British Intelligence. 'She's spent over half her career overseas, some of that time in active war zones. She is an Arabic speaker, she has the tech expertise.' Metreweli has also shown an unusual nous for public relations. In 2021, as 'Director K', MI5's head of hostile states counter-intelligence, she gave an interview to The Telegraph in which she spoke of the need to overhaul the Official Secrets Act, arguing that new laws were needed to 'disrupt what is increasingly damaging activity' from 'malign' foreign powers. 'One of the reasons nobody in the media has ever previously interviewed a Director K is we do our work in secret,' she said. 'Necessarily – it's really sensitive work. But one of the reasons I am talking to you now is we need a whole of society effort.' The National Security Act 2023 that ensued has proved to be a useful tool for security forces. In 2022, under the pseudonym 'Ada', Metreweli gave another interview to the Financial Times in which she revealed that she was a 'geek' who had only ever wanted to be a spy. She recalled growing up abroad commandeering an Usborne spycraft manual from an older brother, learning to write in code. As a handler for field agents, she had to get to grips with nuclear technology as well as managing 'incredibly close relationships with a number of different agents who were risking their lives to be able to share secrets with us'. 'No man's land' Being a woman in a man's world had advantages as well as disadvantages. 'In the moments where you're deciding to become an agent, you're having to make thousands of risk-based calculations, but you're not quite sure how to respond emotionally,' she said. 'There's no etiquette. Ironically, it becomes a bit of a no man's land.' In that space, being a woman could make it easier to break down boundaries. 'I have done some extraordinary things in extraordinary places,' she said. 'And I've had some difficult experiences, both professional and personal. I've had times of trauma and come through the other side, with immense support from the service.' Where previous chiefs have come from diplomatic roles, Metreweli is more of an insider. 'Anyone in the service is going to be very pleased that an insider has been chosen,' says one senior source. 'She's very highly regarded. It's a welcome appointment. She comes across very well. She's very accessible, and importantly for someone in that job, very empathetic.' If there is a question mark over Metreweli, it may be her age. At 47, she is almost a decade younger than her predecessor was when he took on the role. 'She is rather young for the appointment,' says Sir Richard Dearlove, who was MI6 chief from 1999-2004. 'I don't know much about her personally. She is a forceful presence, however. She might turn out to be rather good.' The nation will hope so. When she takes up her new job she will have an unenviable inbox. There are threats from Russia, China and Iran, wars in the Middle East and Ukraine, ever more sophisticated cyberattacks, the endless threat of terrorism. Then there is how to handle the USA, which is an increasingly unpredictable intelligence partner with Donald Trump as president.
Yahoo
4 days ago
- Sport
- Yahoo
Rowers back among the medals after Paris Olympics flop
Back on the water after their worst Olympic performance in 36 years, the Australian rowing team has claimed five medals at the World Cup in Varese, Italy. Triple Olympian Alex Hill, winner of a Tokyo gold and Rio silver medal in the men's four, led a new-look crew to victory as his squad sought to rebound after a lean Paris yield. Advertisement Australian rowers left France with just one bronze, won by women's pair Annabelle McIntyre and Jess Morrison, which prompted a searching review of the high performance program. The 2024 result brought to an end a stunning run by Australian crews which had yielded seven medals, including three gold from the quartet dubbed the "Oarsome Foursome". Hill was joined in Italy by two new faces in the boat in Nikolas Pender and Austin Reinehr as well as Fergus Hamilton, who was part of the crew that finished last in the Paris final. The Australians executed a measured and clinical race to take the gold medal, surging ahead of both Dutch crews in the closing stages. Advertisement Veteran Paralympian Erik Horrie also claimed gold, dominating the PR1 men's single sculls final to clinch his first World Cup win since 2022. After winning Tokyo gold, a reworked women's four failed to make the final in Paris. A new selection picked up silver in Varese in Jaime Ford, Eliza Gaffney, Georgina Rowe and Jacqueline Swick. Lisa Greissl and Sam Stunell, racing together internationally for the first time, also won silver in the PR3 mixed double sculls. The women's eight added bronze after battling through a highly competitive final, finishing just behind Great Britain and the United States. Advertisement Rowing Australia Performance Director Paul Thompson praised the team's execution and composure, with 17 rowers making their senior debut, signalling a generational change. "It's not just about the results - what's pleasing is how these crews are going about it," Thompson said. "Erik (Horrie) and the men's four were outstanding and we've got some new rowers on the podium, which is great to see."
