A QUARTET of rowers from St Peter’s School in York are celebrating their first gold medal at the National Schools’ Regatta since 2005.

The school’s under-18 boys crew of Rory Wells, Jeffrey Cho, Kenny Liu and Adam Janes, coxed by Helen Skinner, stormed through their semi-final before edging to victory in the final at the Holme Pierrepont National Watersports Centre in Nottingham, A total of 3,500 U18 rowers from clubs and schools faced a strong head-wind at the international venue as they raced for medals and national rankings.

In the opening time trial round, St Peter’s finished a close second out of the 24 crews and that result put them straight into the semi-finals.

Going full throttle in the semi they stormed away from the other five crews, leaving them standing from quarter distance. The St Peter’s ranks then built on that to win by the huge margin of 28 seconds.

In the final, St Peter’s were led by two crews from London until the halfway mark, but they launched a pre-planned attack to take a lead of around half a length.

The rival crews fought back, but the St Peter’s boys managed to fight them off to cross the finishing line two seconds clear of the field.

Jamie MacLeod, the school’s director of rowing, said: “The crew has worked incredibly hard all year on the water and in the gym to achieve this result.

“They have already won the Schools’ Head of the River Race in March, where 300 U18 crews raced over the Boat Race course in London.

“In addition, they won a gold medal in Belgium at the Ghent International Regatta in April.

“From here they will move into a bigger boat, an eight, with four other boys and aim to get selected for the prestigious Henley Royal Regatta at the end of June.”