British Rowing Indoor Rowing Championships 2024

On Saturday 7 December, BRIC24 took place as part of FitFest24 at the National Exhibition Centre in Birmingham. 1 world record and 23 national records were broken across the 51 events.

Ten TLA students made the trip, each racing two or three times, having met the qualification standards set by Mr Weare. 7 of them took part in the age group timed races and all of them took part in both the age 500 metre races and the team relays. Every student produced at least one personal best.

Tomasz (Y10) broke the TLA record for Year 10s over 5 minutes, covering 1403 metres, finishing 11th, out of 43.

Piotr (Y8) went into the Y8 boys 3-minute race as the slowest of our three students, but turned out a massive improvement to finish 9th, whilst Izak and Mehrzad finished 14th and 16th respectfully. All three of them showed a starting speed in the first minute that promised much for later in the day in the 500-metre event.

Maisie (Y7) and Zoe (Y7) had their first introduction to racing on indoor rowing machines finishing 15th and 19th both inside Mr Weare’s top 20 target. Maisie improving her personal best to 443m in 2 minutes, a score only bettered by 10 TLA Year 9s out of the 137 that have done indoor rowing in PE this term.

Last up in the age group timed piece events was Klaudia (Y9), who really attacked the first half of her 4-minute row, matching her speed for 500m, putting her within 13m of the lead in 7th place. This brave approach cost her in the second half of the race, as she dropped to 26th at the end in her race and to 40th overall, but still in the top half of the 86-strong event.
Whilst our students recovered from their first races, the GB rowing team raced in the open events. The women’s open event was won by Olympic Champion Lauren Henry, whilst Olympic medallists were beaten in the men’s team by a younger member of the talent pathway. GB coach Darren Whiter came over to say hello and mentioned to the TLA students that Mr Weare had taught him how to coach!

In the 500 metre sprint events, 9 of our 10 students produced personal best performances. Race 39 had the Y8 Boys, Y8 Girls, and Y7 Girls all competing at the same time on the 60 rowing machines.

Jasmel (Y8) finished 5th in the 8 girls event, 6 seconds ahead of 6th place and only 1.6 seconds away from a medal in a new best time of 1:56.2. Maisie and Zoe both improved their 500m times, finishing 7th and 8th in the Year 7 Girls 500m event.

The Year 8 Boys race was a real humdinger, with three of our 4 boys all holding a medal position at some point during the race. For the first 300m, Piotr lay in 2nd place, Mehrzad moving from 8th at 100m to 5th, Izak moving from 5th to 3rd to 4th in each of the first three 100m sections. At 400m, Piotr was overtaken by the eventual winner, last year’s bronze medallist, Mehrzad moved up to 4th, overtaking Izak, who was then 5th. In the last 100m, Mehrzad went nearly 2 seconds faster that Piotr to take the bronze medal only 2.2 seconds behind gold. Remmi (Y8) was 10th.

Tomasz set his second personal best of the day, finishing 9th in the Y10 Boys 500m event, only 4.2 seconds away from a podium position, in an event where the national record was beaten by 4 seconds.

Meanwhile Klaudia again attacked from the beginning in the Y9 Girls 500m, moving from 6th at the start to 4th by 400m, but then faded in the last 50m to finish 8th of 39. Joshua (Y11) got himself under 1:40.0 for 500m as he raced to 16th.

Less than an hour later, the team relays began. All 10 students were spread across 3 teams, 2 mixed and a boys team who were only able to race thanks to a year from another school where Mr Weare works selflessly subbing in for a missing TLA student. Whilst at a disadvantage with only three in the team, they gained valuable race experience, finishing 10th.

In the mixed event, any age up to year 10 and 11 were racing, so our B team comprising 2 year 7 girls and 2 year 8 boys did well in finishing 6th. Our A team who started off very fast made some fantastic tactical decisions, lying 22 metres out of the medals with a minute to go.
In the last minute they hauled back on Kings School Worcester to beat them by just 6 metres, our first ever team medal at BRIC.

Altogether a very successful day, with 5 of the 10 students returning home with a national medal round their neck.

Our next external indoor rowing competition will be the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships in late March. Any student getting 85% or more of their age group standard can earn an invite to go, which can be found on the rowing noticeboard in the Atrium.