Durham ARC’s Roger Stainforth recorded a fifth consecutive victory in the Masters 70-74 category at the Mizuno British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC) held at the Lee Valley Velopark in London on December 8th 2018.
This year’s Championships was the biggest ever, attracting over 1800 competitors of all ages from across the UK and overseas, including many members of the GB Rowing Team, competing for honours in 82 races using 160 Concept2 machines.
Although DARC’s only entrant, Roger emerged as the clear winner from a field of six, which included veterans of the 1968 GB Olympic rowing squad, completing the 2km in a season’s best of 7m 21.6s, over 30 seconds ahead of second placed Colin Slade of Fitness Matters Indoor Rowing Team.
The closest challenge to Roger’s time came from 83 year-old Michael Hurley of Willpower Fitness, who won the 80-84 age category in 7.38.2.
Roger holds the British record time for the 70-74 age range with the 7m 08.7s he set in winning the same Championships in February 2015. He will move up an age category before the 2019 Championships.
After a very successful season last year he is continuing in similar vein, and in November took first place in the Scottish Indoor Championships in Motherwell, with a time of 3m 29.7 for 1km (the standard race distance for masters in Scotland). He also still holds the 70-74 British record for the 1km distance with the 3.23.5 he set at the 2015 Scottish Championships.
Archived results from BRIC can be found here. British records for Concept2 are here.
Explanatory note – a rebranding and change of date and venue meant that the BR Indoor Championships took place in February 2015 and again in December 2015. Since then the date has become settled on December.