Three in a row for Benton at the British Champs

Benton came to the indoor rowing competition via gym workouts and a competitive drive. Three years ago he worked his way to the winning position of the top men’s event. Last year he won again. This year he became the first to win the men’s open three times in a row.

Taking on national team rowers from Great Britain’s two-time World Champion men's four and British single sculling phenomenon, Alan Campbell, Benton already had the lead within the first 100 metres of the race and held enough of an edge to win, without any real threat from the others in his category.

“I had planned to go quicker than this as I had a really good training piece on Wednesday,” said Benton after the race, “but it (the race) got a bit easy through the middle. In the end just wanted to win.”

Benton’s training in the last year has changed since his indoor rowing-only days. Last year Benton became part of Great Britain’s ‘World Class Start’ programme which takes talented athletes and trains them with the aim of becoming members of the national rowing team.

Currently Benton spends more time on the water than in the gym and he has already been through one round of national team trials this year. His aim is to be in the British rowing squad by 2007. Benton now has to squeeze his indoor rowing competition around the set training of the World Class Start programme.

“This will be it (for indoor rowing competition) for me until the World Championships in February,” says Benton who took just one day off from his training before competing last weekend as compared to his focused taper in previous years. “I can compete as long as it doesn’t clash with my water training.”

Benton, who competes for the indoor rowing team, MAD, says it is still a buzz to race against rowers with Olympic medals. “I’m still in awe of them,” says Benton.

Perhaps the best race of 80 different categories of the day, the men’s 35 – 39 open category, had MAD indoor rower Nik Flemming of Great Britain go neck-and-neck with South Africa’s Pieter Engelbrecht.

Going through the last 500 metres of the race only 0.2 seconds separated the two duellers.

Fellow MAD rower Jon Goodall described the last 500 metres; “Pieter from 500m out starts pulling 1:27 (splits) to pull away from Nik, who then responds with 1:27's and 1:28's and is now matching Pieter for splits but is still behind by virtue of Pieter starting his sprint earlier than Nik. 200m to go and Nik then drops pace to 1:24's to claw back Pieter's lead and overhaul him to win in 5:59.2, 0.8 seconds ahead of Pieter who rowed 6:00.0.”

Over 2400 individuals and 112 teams competed this year at BIRC in front of 7000 spectators. The youngest winners were 10 year olds Katie Metalli and Jack Bladen who won their respective category by racing the most number of metres in two minutes. Bladen scored 480 metres with Metalli just in front at 484 metres.

At the other end of the age spectrum John Hodgson raced as the oldest competitor. Hodgson out-aged the next oldest by 15 years and at 96 years old he raced alone in his category. Hodgson first competed in 1999 as an 89 year old and currently holds the World Record for his age group.

Like Benton, Hodgson began indoor rowing never having stepped inside a boat. “I’m not really interested in rowing on the water,” Hodgson says on Concept 2’s website. “I think I’d lose my balance too quickly.”

Regular competitor Anna Bailey of Great Britain, in her first year in the women’s open 55 – 59 category, set a new World Record and her team mate from the Old Wrecks Indoor Rowing Club, Susan Little, followed suit in the lightweight equivalent category. Bailey’s new record is 7:28.0 with Little setting the standard at 7:53.9.

The next major indoor rowing event is the European Open to be held in Amsterdam, the Netherlands on 16 December.