Two girls from Great Marlow School picked up a bronze medal in rowing at the National Schools Regatta last weekend.

Jessie McAuley and Chloe Gosnell, both in Year 10, raced up a year in the Girls Championship J16 pairs. 

They both showed their class from the first race. 

Lining up for the final, they were definitely expecting a tough race but knew they had a realistic chance of a medal. 

By halfway at 1000m, they were in fourth place, less than a length behind the leaders and a few feet behind second and third, with the remainder of the field falling a little behind. 

Having already pushed to close up on the leading three, the girls then found extra pace and moved steadily ahead and with 500m to go it looked like they could take gold.

The final dash for the line saw the older Kingston crew push back hard and in a nail-biting last 10 strokes the medal was certain but the colour still completely open. Bronze for these two young rowers was extremely hard fought and a great achievement. 

Coach Ross Honey said: “Both Chloe and Jessie have been entirely committed to their training and to GMSBC over the last year. To have achieved such a result in any National Schools competition is a great achievement but to have done so racing against an older and more experienced field is definitely one they should be very proud of.” 

Great Marlow School had a good performance over the rest of the regatta with seven other crews making finals with notable performances from the two senior eights.