Comments from ParalympicsGB rowers following this morning’s session.
Ben Pritchard
Result: won his heat in men’s PR1 single sculls in a Paralympics best time to qualify for the final
Age: 32
Hometown: Swansea
“I’m really happy. It’s always good to cross the line first but more importantly, the times I’m seeing in training are coming to fruition in racing. That’s always nice, to not worry about who is around you and trust your body because you know what you’ve been doing in the winter and you know what will work.”
“Sometimes you need to save a bit of energy and savour the moment. That’s kind of why I stopped, I knew I had the win, the roar from the crowd was incredible, there was lightning and it was such a picture. Seeing the lightning strike and everything, I was sat there thinking, ‘this is cool’. I just wanted to savour that moment because you don’t get many of those in racing.
“This is the biggest crowd we’ve ever had at a world rowing regatta and Sunday is sold out so it’s only going to get better and better. We’ll hope for the same kind of result on Sunday and if not, I know I’ve put myself in the fight to get a medal and fight against the world’s best which is all you want to do.
“It’s been a three-year project. Tokyo was a whirlwind but we’ve had three years to work on my race strategy, my warming up, my cooling down, and more importantly, after the learnings of Tokyo, the Paralympics are like no other regatta in that you race back-to-back, so we’ve done quite a lot in training to simulate that. I know I’ll be able to replicate that.”
Lauren Rowles
Result: won her PR2 mixed doubles sculls heat with Gregg Stevenson in a world record time of 7:56.92 to qualify for the final
Age: 26
Hometown: Bromsgrove
“We’ve been promising the fans and our partners that we’d come out and set a world record.
“We’ve been saying sub-eight minutes for a long time now and it’s nice to deliver on that today, it’s what we’ve been trying to do in the last couple of years.
“Personally, I’ve been working in the last ten years to do a sub-eight minutes and push this field out to where it has never been before.
“Our goal was to deliver a world best and then that gold medal.
“It’s all about going out, winning that race and continuing the legacy of this boat. I can’t wait to get out there and do it with Gregg.”
Ed Fuller
Result: won his PR3 mixed coxed fours heat in a world record time of 6:43.68 to qualify for the final
Age: 21
Hometown: Gitisham
“We can’t ask for much more than that. We knew the training leading into it, it was quite quick conditions, albeit not as quick as it had been earlier in the week. Everything came together and I’m really pleased with how we performed in that race. It’s difficult knowing all of the top seeds are in the other heat. We didn’t know quite how we’d done because we were the first. It was really solid. We now have three new Paralympians in the crew and it’s really cool to be able to call yourself a Paralympian.”
Annie Caddick
Result: finished second in her PR3 mixed doubles sculls heat alongside Samuel Murray so heads into the repechage tomorrow
Age: 25
Hometown: Isle of Wight
“We know we’re in the mix, that’s what that race just taught us. We know we need to be a bit stronger from the start, we can learn from this and hopefully deliver a better performance tomorrow.”
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