The English Indoor Rowing Championships were back after a four year break.
Hollingworth lake RC delivered the first English Indoor Rowing Championships in four years and welcomed competitors from across the globe to come and compete.
Across the 2000m racing the fastest time of the day went to Loïc Schalbetter. His 6:13.7 was good enough to win the 19-29 Open event while Rachael Mcilwraith’s 7:07.1 was the fastest Women’s time which carried her to a gold medal in the 30-39 field.
Throughout the day there were some standout performances. Ian Wilde was in sensational form coming into the event and stormed to victory in the Open 40-49 field, the largest of the day. He finished some eight seconds ahead of second place Anthony Hooton who in turn was just under seven seconds in front of Robert Morris. The Open 50-59 field was just about as large and Adrian peel beat out some stiff competition to come away with the gold medal in this event.
In some of the other Women’s events, there was success for Talia Clark in the 19-29 2000m while Sally Brierley posted a blisteringly quick 7:14.3 to take gold in the 40-49 event ahead of Tereza Horejsova and Katie Loker respectively.
We were expecting fireworks in some of the 500m events and goodness me did the sprinters deliver. After taking gold over 2000m, earlier in the day, Schalbetter won his second event a few hours later. It was gold for the Swiss star in the 19-29 Open 500m event but he wasn’t able to get the fastest time of the day across the shorter distance. That honour went to Chris Scott who snuck under the 1:15 barrier posting a 1:14.8, 0.6s quicker than Schalbetter. Hot on their heels was Freddie Stuart finishing in 1:15.8, just ahead of Samir Tahraoui.
Meg Knight was the fastest woman of the day, winning the 19-29 Women’s event in 1:30.6. Across the age groups, the winners were on fire. Rachell Fee won the 30-39 event in 1:131.8 while Sally Brierley was the quickest in the 40-49 field in a time of 1:32.0.
The full results from the English Indoor Rowing Championships are available here.
Inspired by this event, why don't you look at your next indoor rowing event being the British Rowing Indoor Championships on the 6 and 7 December 2025.