STRATFORD-upon-Avon rower Esme Booth laid down a marker ahead of the upcoming European Rowing Championships as she bids for Olympic glory this summer.
Booth kicked off the season in style with World Rowing Cup victory in Varese last weekend as part of the women’s four alongside Helen Glover, Samantha Redgrave and Rebecca Shorten.
The quartet edged out fellow Brits Heidi Long, Rowan McKellar, Holly Dunford and Emily Ford for first place and the 25-year-old revelled in a strong result in the Italian sunshine following a long, hard winter in the UK.
Booth said: “It is a bit of a change in climate from home.
“It’s been windy and rainy at home, a miserable winter, and it’s so beautiful to be here.
“It was nice to get out and enjoy some sunshine.”
Booth’s quartet now head to Hungary for the European Championships (April 25-28), where they will hope to lay down another marker with just three months left until the Games.
They will bid for gold in the women’s four following a heartbreaking fourth-place finish in Tokyo, but showed they are in a good place to make the step onto the podium with their comfortable victory, as they led home their compatriots by over four seconds in Italy.
The European Championships are another chance to iron out any issues before the second World Rowing Cup in May.
And double Olympic champion Glover insisted there is still plenty of work to do despite their strong start.
Glover said: “It’s the best way to start the season.
“We very much came here with it part of our training run up to the [Olympic] Games so to come out and do that 2km within that is just really big practice.
“We are in a training flow so we will go back home into training almost as if we haven’t missed a step to flow into the Europeans. It is important to keep the consistency now so we are not peaking for this, we are peaking for 100 days time.
“We haven’t been together that long so finding out where we are and what we need to work on is definitely step one.”
British Rowing is the governing body for the sport and is responsible for the development of rowing in England and the training and selection of rowers to represent Great Britain. The GB Rowing Team is supported by the National Lottery Sports Fund. To find out more, and to follow the team, head to https://britishrowing.org/
