Success for Saints Rowing in Inverness: The Beginning of Another Good Season?
This weekend, Saints Rowing travelled up to Inverness Fours and Small Boats Head for their first outdoor race of the season. The Saints did themselves proud, bringing home two bronze medals in both the Women's and Open beginner coxed fours, a gold medal in the Open Novice coxed four, and a gold in the R2 coxless quad. On top of this, many St Andrews boats placed in the top half of their races, proving a successful weekend for the team.
Saints Rowing have not been short on success this year, having eight athletes who row with the boat club selected to represent Great Britain, Estonia and Czechia in the 2026 Rowing Beach Sprints Finals in Qingdao, China, at the end of October. Additionally, Director of Rowing in St Andrews, Lewis McCue, and Boat Club member, Iain Dowcra, were the coaches for the GB team in Qingdao this autumn. This is proving very exciting in the lead-up to beach sprint rowing making its debut in the LA 2028 Olympics, with hopes for Saints Rowing sending rowers to the games. British Rowing has also established a GB Beach Sprint Performance Development Academy, working in partnership with Scottish Rowing, Sport Scotland and the University of St Andrews.
St Andrews has become a hub for coastal rowing in recent years, hosting Saints Coastal Regatta since 2022. At the Scottish Rowing Awards 2026, St Andrews won event of the year with Saints Regatta, being described as a “welcoming and memorable celebration of Beach Sprint rowing” by Scottish Rowing. There was also success at in the Crew of the Year category, as St Andrew’s own Hansine Marshall and Tash Phillips won the award after an “outstanding performance at Henley Royal Regatta.”
Cameron Khan, the racing secretary of the boat club, described the athletes at Saints Rowing as “some of the hardest working people at the university.” Rowing can be known as a very demanding sport, which can be off-putting for many young people, especially those who are balancing training with university workload. Khan says that at St Andrews, there is “still time for us to be a student, which makes it a very good programme.”
Clara Conrad, a cox for Saints Rowing, joined the club with no prior experience, and said that she would encourage beginners to try out rowing at St Andrews, due to the community. “Since it’s such a big team, there is definitely somebody for everyone.” At the Inverness Head, St Andrews put out both novice and senior crews, so there are plenty of racing opportunities for beginners and novices too.
Inverness Head serves as a good place marker at the beginning of the year for rowing, allowing them to test out crews and solidify squads for the rest of the semester. Being the largest head race in Scotland, Khan called Inverness an “exciting opportunity to see how we all match up this early in the season.” These results from Inverness show that we have an exciting rowing season on our hands for the Saints!
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