Southport's Lucy Grinalds helped the U.S. Women's Four win its heat Thursday at the World Rowing Junior Championships in England. Her sister, Rosie, also competed Thursday along with rowers from Westport, Weston and New Canaan.
Grinalds and her crew won in 7:20.26 to finish nearly five seconds ahead of Germany. Grinalds is among three girls on the team that won a silver medal last year in the Women's Four. The victory secured the foursome a berth in Saturday's finals.
"That was awesome," Grinalds said on the USRowing website. "Last year, we started off really too hard in the heats and lost it at the end. This year, we tried to go at a more sustainable pace the entire time, which really paid off. Going into it, you never really know how fast everyone is going to be, but we were pleasantly surprised at the speed we showed today."
Lucy and Rosie row for the Norwalk-based Connecticut Boat Club. Rosie and Corinne Bozzini finished second in their heat of the Women's Pair. They will row in a repechage tomorrow. The Women's Quadruple Sculls, with Westport's Lizzy Youngling, won its repechage to earn a berth in the semifinals on Friday.
The Men's Eight, with Westport's Max Meyer-Bosse, finished third in its heat. The Women's Eight, with Deirdre Fitzpatrick of CBC, also finished third.
Graham Anderson of Weston and New Canaan's Charlie Campbell finished fourth in their heat in the Men's Double Sculls. New Canaan crew member Jonathon Rosow helped the Men's Quadruple Sculls finish third.
Most crews will compete in repechage races Friday. Complete results are available on row2k.com and more information is available at usrowing.org.
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