Rebecca Shorten vows to help rowing quartet perfect the ‘magic’ in time for Olympics

Rebecca Shorten (far right) with Helen Glover, Esme Booth and Samantha Redgrave in Varese

James Reid

Belfast rower Rebecca Shorten admits there is still plenty to learn ahead of this summer’s Olympics as she heads to the European Rowing Championships.

Shorten kicked off the season in style with World Rowing Cup victory in Varese last weekend as part of the women’s four alongside Esme Booth, Samantha Redgrave and Helen Glover.

The quartet will go for gold in Hungary on Saturday after safely negotiating their preliminary race on Thursday with a win over reigning champions Romania.

With World Rowing Cup success last week and hopes of more silverware this weekend, there will be no complacency as Shorten knows there is still plenty to do before reaching Paris.

She said: “We have been doing well in training.

“Varese was a good run and I think we have got that little bit of magic gel together which is really nice to have this early on.

“There is still some more to come I’m sure, we have a big training block coming up.”

Shorten’s quartet will hope to lay down another marker on Saturday 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 echoed Shorten in insisting there is still plenty of work to do despite their strong start.

“It’s the best way to start the season,” she added. “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/