Brookes Retain Women’s Henley Title

A dominant performance throughout the week in the Academic Eight saw a completely new crew of Alice Harper, Lieben Dickens, Coralie Spearman, Harriet Ferguson, Katie Metalli, Jordan Simper, Beth Meakin, Beth Wilford-Dutton and returning cox Aisling Humphries-Griffiths take victory by an impressive margin of 4.5 lengths, retaining the Academic Eights Title won in 2018. The crew had recorded clear water margins over Oxford, Cardiff and Birmingham earlier in the regatta and this demonstrated the depth that is developing in the women’s programme at BROOKES|Rowing, with a mixture of experience levels throughout the athletes.

Sophia Heath, racing in an U23 Great Britain development crew, beat off international competition from Princeton University (USA) and D.S.R.V. Laga (NED) to take the Championship Eights title and equal the course record of 4 minutes and 36 seconds.

This marks one of the strongest performances by the club in recent years, with many of the athletes continuing to race at Henley Royal Regatta two weeks later. In addition to this, the period following Henley Women’s Regatta forms an important part of the selection process for development crews to race at World Cup III and also for the U23 World and European Championships.