ANU rowers picked up a silver medal in the first final of the Australian University Games Regatta – the mixed fours.

The mixed fours and eights finals are traditionally held a day before all of the other University Games rowing finals.

The ANU crew of Jacqui Williams, Emily Caudle, Francis Snelgar, David Wright and cox Renae Domaschenz matched it out of the start with the crew from Adelaide University. However, the Adelaide crew, comprising all national representatives including London Olympic medallist James McRae, powered away in the middle part of the race to take an unassailable lead.

The ANU crew worked away at their own race and put good distance between themselves and the rest of the field to cross the line second, a convincing 12 seconds ahead of the third placed University of WA crew.

The medal was a nice start to ANU’s finals campaign. ANU has qualified for a total of 14 out of a possible 16 ‘A’ finals at the University Games regatta – the most of any of the competing universities.

In today’s other final, the mixed eights, ANU finished fifth, a nail biting two hundredths of a second off fourth. It was a great performance, particularly as 50% of the ANU crew only graduated from the ANU Boat Club’s Introduction to Rowing course within the last 12 months.

Today’s performances positioned ANU in third place on the overall rowing point score coming into the last day of finals.