The Exmouth rowers who competed so well in Cornwall

Exmouth Rowing Club’s gruelling winter training programme paid big dividends last weekend when a 12-strong team descended on the Cornish Indoor Rowing Championships and swept to multi podium honours, writes Graham Hurley.

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Building on their success in the recent Welsh National Championships, the Exmouth rowers scored impressive times event after event at Newquay’s Sports Centre in a busy day’s competition that saw them heading back east with no less then eleven medals.

There were a number of gold medal success’s led by Morag van Niekerk in the W40-49 Class for both the 2km and the 500M events. Gold was also won by Max Goodesmith, J Year 10; Billy Baxter, M50-59 and Robin Corser, M60-69.

There was gold too for the Junior 2Km relay team of Joe Willey, Tim Pearce, Greg Medlock and Philo Waddell.

Rob Mew landed a silver medal in the M30-39 500M.

Continuing the award winning, there were a number of bronze medals and these went to; Tim Pierce, J Year 11; Joe Willey, J16-18; Pete Johns, ML30-39; Jon Houghton M40-49 and also by the Men’s 2km relay team of Charlie Angell, Billy Baxter, Pete John and Jon Houghton.

Charlie Angell notched Exmouth’s best time of the day and also served up a best individual time of 6:44 for the lung-busting 2k course.

A massive thanks must got to Sheila Houghton for her support for the club at the event.

Exmouth’s indoor training programme is the work of Billy Baxter and Club Secretary Les Norcliffe, who were celebrating with the rest of the team afterwards.

Baxter said: “Winning all these medals is just brilliant. However, what is so special about this particular success is how great it is to see the guys pushing themselves to Personal Best times event after event. Rowing on machines is the perfect way to build fitness and technique during the winter. You set yourself target times and then put in that extra effort to go just a little bit faster. You’re challenging the machine of course, but you’re also challenging yourself. Indoor rowing can be brutal, but come the summer, all the winter hard work will prove worth it!”

In the meantime it’s back to the rowing machines in the clubhouse where the winter target of crossing the Atlantic before the clocks change in March is way ahead of schedule. So far over 4,200,000 metres have been collectively rowed – only 600,000 to go!