Columba rowers have been competing at regional and South Island regattas over the holidays. Combined with regular training camps it has been a busy summer for our rowers!

Over the past two weeks, the Columba Rowing squad has been hard at work training for the Maadi Cup in six weeks time. On the 30th and 31st of January, they were in Twizel again for the South Island Club Championship Regatta at Lake Ruataniwha, where some excellent results were achieved.

The squad came home with medals in four events: Bronze in the Novice Coxed Four, Silver in the U15 and U17 Double Sculls and a Gold in the Women’s Club Pair. Siena Snow and Caitlin O’Brien won this race by over 20 seconds, and are headed to the Rocket Foods NZ Rowing Champs next week to compete in the same event. They are also in composite senior and club eights, and Siena is in a club quad. For anybody interested, the results from all these regattas can be found on rowit.nz. The squad were very happy with their results from Club Champs, and were proud to say that every member of the squad made at least one A final after heats on Saturday. They also enjoyed watching head coach, Matt Adam, race a masters quad, demonstrating his skills and coming home with a silver medal to add to his collection.

Last weekend, the rowers were busy at a training camp at Henley on the Taieri river. On Saturday and Sunday they had beautiful water, and were able to get a lot of kilometres under their belts, to improve both their fitness and technique. The senior rowers also went back on Monday morning and although it was slightly foggy, there were no jet boats in sight, meaning the conditions were near-perfect on the river. They were also fortunate enough to have Glen Sinclair, the coach of Otago University rowing, out on the water to give them some extra tips.

We would like to give our best wishes to Caitlin O'Brien and Siena Snow who are competing at the New Zealand Club Rowing Championships next week. 

Written by Bridgette Sutton.