|
Rowing has played a significant part for well over a century in providing opportunities for recreation and sport in this part of London and has an excellent record in producing local athletes who have been highly successful in national competitions, some going on to represent Great Britain at international level.
There has been club rowing on our stretch of the Lea since the middle of the 19th Century, though the structure was very fragmented. Because rowing was, like other sports, bifurcated – as between ‘amateurs’ and others, there was little prospect for oarsmen from the Lea to compete at national level. Rowing on the site was therefore under the auspices of a number of small clubs (Crowland RC, Britannia RC, City Orient RC, Stuart Ladies RC and Gladstone Warwick RC) who took turns as top club on the present site. This situation prevailed until the amalgamation of the Amateur Rowing Association (ARA) and the National Amateur Rowing Association (NARA) in the 60s. At this time it became increasingly clear that the old clubs were unable to provide the basis for competition at a standard appropriate to the rising ambitions of the membership; so they merged themselves into one new club, the Lea Rowing Club, in the Autumn of 1980.
For many years, the Greater London Council supported a rowing facility on the river under the auspices of the Inner London Education Authority (ILEA), which brought every secondary school pupil from Tower Hamlets and Hackney down for a chance to row. This program enabled the predecessor clubs and the Lea Rowing Club to bring local athletes up to the standard for representing Great Britain. In total over 20 oarsmen and women from the Lea have represented Great Britain in Olympics and World Championships, at junior and senior levels. Following the abolition of the GLC, the days of this program were numbered. The Borough took over the program but was unable to sustain it on the inevitably reduced scale.
On our own part and with some support from YES, we began several years ago to rebuild a junior rowing component, which we feel is important to both the breadth and the standard of the club. Results to date are very encouraging, both with regard to participation and in terms of the standard of the best young athletes.
|
