London Youth Rowing, the organisers of the indoor rowing event at this year’s London Youth Games, had spent 4 – 5 months travelling across London with their ‘RowShow’ vehicle. They staged 17 Development Events and played host to 30 boroughs. They took the van, rowing machines, screen and projector, set up the event and raced hundreds of young people on indoor rowing machines, sometimes, for the first time ever. The aim was to encourage as many boroughs as possible to enter a team in the Games Finals. Last year they were a Development Sport at the Games and due to the huge interest shown, they were invited to become a full point scoring sport this year for the first time.

It turned out to be a huge success – when the entries closed they had 28 out of a possible 33 boroughs that had entered a team to the Finals which were held in the Indoor Running Track of Crystal Palace on the 1st July.

In what was a challenging venue, all 28 boroughs came and ‘had a go’! The level of enthusiasm and noise produced was amazing and everyone had a really great day “with the not just the Development Events, but all the indoor events we do, we have staged hundreds of these over the years, but this has been one of the best we have ever done” said Matt Rostron – Programme Director of London Youth Rowing “the sportsmanship and professional manner of these young people has been amazing all day and they are all great ambassadors for their boroughs”.

There were some really close races too, down to 0.5 seconds in some cases. The crowd really got behind their athletes too – Concept2 brought the set up usually seen at the National Junior Indoor Rowing Championships (NJIRC), with 30 race machines and a huge screen and pa system that filled the whole hall. It enabled the crowd and the team managers to follow the racing on the screen and really get behind their team mates.

Last years winners, Redbridge, could only manage a hard fought for fourth this tear as Corporation of London continued their great Indoor Rowing season by coming third – they won the team event at the NJIRC earlier in the year and got to follow the Oxford Cambridge Boat Race in a launch.

Richmond were terrific in all races and rowed really well to be placed second but it was Greenwich, managed by the hard working Peter Rouse that won by 22 points to take the title of London Youth Games Indoor Rowing Champions 2007. A great result and one that the team richly deserved.