A JUNIOR sports club which is marking its 150th anniversary had its best day ever at the UK schools championships racing to gold and bronze at an Olympic venue.

Monmouth School Rowing Club’s crew set an event record at Eton’s Dorney lake at the 3,000 competitor National Schools’ Regatta, clocking 5.54 to become the first boat to win the 1st 8s title in under six minutes.

And Gloucester Hartpury’s Charlotte Enright and Rhiannon Morgan also took the Championship girls’ double sculls title from a 49-strong field.

The boys’ 1st 8s event is for crews from smaller schools, and sees them race in a joint field with those competing for Championship 8s.

The Wye boat ranked sixth overall in the eight-boat final, finishing 2L back on the nation’s top boat, St Paul’s, London.

Five of the crew also competed in the Championship fours event next day, bagging the bronze by a fraction of a second.

The 1st VIII dazzled in its impressive new John W Hartland German-built boat after winning the equivalent event in the Schools’ Head of the River time-trial in March.

The crew of Iwan Hadfield, Joe Harrison, Antony Wright, Ryan Baldwin, Ben Emes, Robbie Prosser-Wrench, Cameron Michie, Hamish Lawson and cox Jack Tottem raced home third in their semi to make the final, where their only rivals for the 1st 8s crown would be Enniskillen from Ireland.

And in the final, they grabbed an early lead over their Irish rivals to beat them by 1L, finishing sixth overall just 1/2L down on Eton in fifth.

Next day in the fours, Wright, Emes, Prosser-Wrench, Hadfield and Tottem surged past Radley College into third in the second 500m and held them off by 0.7secs to take bronze just half a second behind Shiplake in silver, with Eton taking gold.

The U16 four came eighth and the U14 quad scull 13th.

Hartpury’s Enright and Morgan led all the way to take gold by 1L from Notts County in 7.26, while clubmates Karrie Spencer and Ruth McAteer were seventh, and they combined to finish fourth in the quad.

Peter Howard, Fergus Woolnough, Robert Kilgour and George Reed were fifth out of 38 in the boys’ quads, and Howard and Reed were sixth in the doubles.

Monmouth Comprehensive’s Arwen Van der Horst, Mia Boycott, Katie Kearsey and Martha Waterstone were 11th out of 37 in girls’ quads.

Monmouth School for Girls’ Darcy Haines, Anna Pritchard, Sasha Baldwin, Harriet Leaf and Abigail Jones were ninth in girls’ U16 fours, Madeleine Taylor, Sophia Frankel, Sonia Ambrose, Fay Blagbrough and Abigail Potter 11th in U18 fours, and Phoebe Hope, Rosie Davies, Alicia Jones, Isobella Laws and Lolah Rogers 10th in U15 fours.

Ross RC’s Ella Bardsley-Taylor, Yasmin Howe, Eleanor Humphryes, Emily Hermon, and cox Tom Gianessi were 10th out of 68 boats in the U15 girls’ quads.