A YOUNG Wye rower has been called into the GB junior team to race on the Olympic course in Germany next month.

Monmouth School for Boys oarsman Iwan Hadfield is one of 33 athletes from 20 clubs selected to row at the prestigious Munich Junior Regatta on May 4-5.

The school rowing club is celebrating its 150th anniversary this year, and Iwan is the latest in a line of more than 30 rowers produced there who have gone on to GB honours, including Olympic medallists Charlie Wiggin and Colin Moynihan, and 11-time Cambridge Boat Race chief coach Robin Williams, who guided Helen Glover and Heather Stanning to double Olympic gold in the women’s pair.

Iwan will also be following in the stroke puddles of school eight crewmate and current club captain Jack Tottem, who coxed the GB men’s junior four to double silver at last year’s European Coupe de la Jeunesse team event in Ireland.

“We are delighted for Iwan, who has been rewarded for his hard work, dedication and commitment,” said John Griffiths, master in charge of rowing.

“Iwan has made the step up from representing Wales at the Home Countries International Regatta in 2018 to race for GB.”

He and the rest of the school squad travelled to Lake Varese in Italy last week for an Easter training camp, having already made a flying start to their 150th anniversary year, sharing a first ever class eights victory in the national Schools Head of the River Race in London last month dead-heating with Winchester College.

And earlier this month, they launched their new Empacher racing shell, named after former club rowing master John W Hartland, followed by a dinner attended by 200 current and former school rowers.

They have also been given permission by Olympic legend Sir Steve Redgrave - chair of the world’s most prestigious open regatta, Henley Royal - to paddle two eights in a row past at the 180-year-old event this July.

Meanwhile, the only British woman to win five Olympic medals at succesive Games will open Hartpury University and College’s new £8.8million Sports Academy next week.

Superstar rower Dame Katherine Grainger, who is the current chair of UK Sport, won gold in the double scull at the London Games in 2012 alongside silvers at Sydney, Athens, Beijing and Rio before hanging up her blades.

She will be at Hartpury to unveil the state-of-the-art academy – which includes a biomechanics laboratory, a rehabilitation suite and a human performance lab – on Wednesday, May 1.

Hartpury’s junior rowing section - a GB centre of excellence - has also produced the likes of 2018 Churcham world U18 silver medallist James Cartwright.

The biomechanics lab will include tartan running track, sports hall and astro surface testing, the only digital mirrors in the UK that track and map body image using segments relating to exercises and goals, and an Olympic lifting platform with force platforms.

The rehab suite boasts an anti-gravity treadmill. An altitude chamber, is a features of the performance lab, alongside cycle ergometers, 30mph and curved sprint treadmills.

There’s also a 1,500m sq multi-use sports hall with sprung floor, equipped with integrated cameras and audio and cricket nets, a medical room and physiotherapy and sports therapy rooms.