Nat Champs Day 2

The day started well with Ava winning silver in her single scull final.

The boys quad won their semi-final with a tremendous effort, setting a new national record , the first quad to complete the course in under 7 minutes - 6.59.54.

To our surprise Tom and Robby also did well in their semi-final for the double, qualifying for the A final. We hadn't expected them to get this far, which meant two really tough finals in the afternoon - which was going to be exceptionally tough as the crews they'll be competing against had just have one final to race in.

Tom and Robbie's double was an absolute nail biter as they raced a crew from Runcorn to the line. For a moment I thought they'd got gold, but the scoreboard told us they had been beaten by 4/100ths of a second to the silver medal position.

Considering where they've come form this is fantastic, well beyond anything they expected. They whizzed off to the award ceremony to get their medals (pictured), then had 2o minutes recovery time before the coxed quad final.

As they finished their award ceremony, two other City of Oxford rowers passed the finish line behind them winning gold- Lillian and Vera in the J16 sculls, setting a new course record.

Unfortunately the efforts in their double meant that Tom and Robbie had almost nothing left in the tank for the quad, and they came 6th in a race they perhaps otherwise would have won a medal in. Still they consoled themselves with holding the British record for their event.

Alice competed in a single and the girls quad, finding herself in two finals just 7 minutes apart. As scratching from one race would have meant being removed from all her races, she had to do both. They arranged for her to get out of the quad and the chairman's car was waiting to take her back to the start to get in a single that Joe had rowed up for her. Inevitably she was exhausted and came last in her single, but made an absolute monumental effort.

Later we debated the pros and cons of the kids doing more than one event. Last year they'd each been entered for just one event and all but one had been knocked out on the first day. Hence two events for each sculler this year, although that meant exhausted children not being able to put in the race they should have had in what would have been their main event. No doubt we'll be thinking about this next year (where the champs may be in Scotland!) but for now we're all happy and tired and looking forward to a break.

And afterwards there was a lot of de-rigging and loading of boats, driving back home (via a burger bar for the exhausted and emotional athletes) and then unloading the boats, re-rigging before getting home after 10pm where Tom flopped into his bed for a well deserved sleep.

Our first experience of a national event was tremendous, overwhelming, emotional, thrilling and left them all determined to do it again next year.