City of Oxford's youngsters capture silver medals at the British Rowing Junior Championships at Nottingham while Brookes eights dominate at the European University Games in Zagreb, Croatia, writes John Wiggins.

For many juniors the British Rowing Championships are the competitive pinnacle of the year and our local clubs will be very pleased to have reached finals even if only one crew converted this opportunity to medals. The prolific J14 girls from CORC (Josie Nash, Leila Stringer, Bella Bowley, Eilish Turner-Frick and cox, Evie Tinegate) were spurred by success the previous week at Kingston Regatta and belied their age - Leila is still J13 - with a very mature performance in the final. From the start, the gold medal was destined to go to Henley RC but the Oxford girls managed a controlled race working their way up to third place with 500m to go where they pushed through to grab the silver medals. Also in A finals were the CORC J16 girls double that finished sixth while the Hinksey Sculling School boys J15 double was 5th. Falcon's best result was second in the B final for their J15 girls quad.

In Olympic year, the regular schedule of international events gets shuffled and so the European University Games, in September last year, moved to mid-July though clearly not to the detriment of Oxford Brookes who contributed handsomely to regaining the team prize for Great Britain with gold medals in both the men's and women's eights. Three of the men's crew, James Stanhope, Henry Swarbrick and Will Hall were gold medallists for Brookes at last year's event but only Swarbrick and Stanhope were in the recent Henley winning crew calling up Richard Hume Matthew Hnatiw Benjamin Murphy, Richard Hawkins George Eden and cox, Charlie Clarke from their huge squad. The women's eight was Jo Gannon, Christine Duff, Mirella McGee, Susie Dear, Dani Shrosbree, Grace Macdonald, Jessica Brown, Emily Herridge and cox, Alice McWilliam The University of Oxford featured in the women's single where Flo Pickles won a bronze medal, the same hue that her lightweight counterparts, Laure Bonfils, Dani Edmunds, Jowita Mieszkowska and Anna Robotham achieved in the quad scull.

At Molesey Regatta, a number of local scullers chanced an entry but with only singular success. Oxford Academicals' Sonia De Munari, a novice sculler last year showed the progress she has made with victory in the IM2 scull.