THE Great Britain Rowing Team came away with a fantastic four medals on the final day of the European Rowing Championships.

Despite only having trained together for a little over a week, the men’s four of Windsor-based

Ollie Cook

, Matt Rossiter, Rory Gibbs and Sholto Carnegie won the A final by clear water to take a first European gold medal for GB since 2017.

The crew were the fastest qualifiers on Saturday and continued their dominance in the final on Sunday, taking the lead at the 1,000 metre mark.

Gibbs said: “We’re so pleased with how we went. We did exactly what we set out to do, didn’t worry about anyone else and just tried to do our fastest race from A to B.”

The men and women’s eights both claimed superb silver medals.

The women’s eights final saw an exhilarating race for the gold medal with GB’s Fiona Gammond, Zoe Lee, Josephine Wratten, Hattie Taylor from Sunningdale, Rowan McKellar, Rebecca Shorten, Karen Bennett, Holly Norton and Windsor-based cox Matilda Horn finishing six hundredths of a second behind Romania.

Norton said: “We would’ve liked to have the cherry on top [with a gold medal], but as a team of athletes and coaches we’re building lots of momentum which is really powerful this early on in the season.”

The men’s eight, comprising of Tom Ford, James Rudkin, Tom George, Mohamed Sbihi MBE, Jacob Dawson, Ollie Wynne-Griffith, Mat Tarrant, Josh Bugajski and cox Henry Fieldman showed they had learnt lessons from the repecharge on Saturday to finish less than a second behind the German crew to take silver.

Bugajski said: “That was tough. It was a really fast race. It’s a shame not to come away with the win but we have learned a lot this weekend and know we’ve a lot of speed and potential left for the rest of the season.”

The men’s quad of Maidenhead-based Jack Beaumont, Jonny Walton, Angus Groom and Pete Lambert gave it absolutely everything and came away with a bronze medal.

Lambert said: “I’m really happy. You always have to blow a few cobwebs off at the first international regatta of the season. We will be able to build on this through the season going forward to the World Championships.”

Graeme Thomas and John Collins came away with fourth in the men’s double sculls in a final that saw the top four crews separated by less than a second.