DESPITE a winter training program heavily disrupted by repeated flooding and illness, January has been a good month for St Ives rowing club.

The first win of 2013 came last weekend – at the Cambridge winter Head to Head race, a 4,000 meter race split in to two 2,000 meter rows – when the club’s Junior-16s Quad crew completed the two legs of the race in a combined time of 15.08 minutes.

This was an impressive time, compared to many of the other crews on the river, but more impressive was the Junior-18s’ win by the crew of Stefan Gawin, Luke Watson, Tom Wells and Jamie Robinson.

Also representing the club on Saturday was Gary Gilbey, in the Masters C single category, and Rachel Heylen in an IM3 single category.

Being trapped between to competing eights through the bends on the first leg of the race, Gilbey finally passed one of the eights on the straight up to the A14 Bridge over the river, but he had lost time and ended up second in his category.

Heylen also had a good row and after being a few seconds ahead at the half-way stage of the race, she ran out a very close second in her category, losing out to the winner by 11 seconds.

Seven crews from the club also competed in the first leg of this year’s winter league which is a three-race series over 2,600m, in January, February and March.

The eventual winners of each category in this series are the boats with the quickest aggregate time over the three races.

At the end of the January event, three St Ives boats are heading up the field in their category with Tom Wells (J15 single), Luke Watson (J16 single) and Gary Gilbey (Masters C single) flaying the flag for their club.