Octogenarian oarsman Roger Stainforth celebrated double success at the 2024 British Rowing Indoor Championships (BRIC) on December 7th with victory in the 80-84 age group Open 2000 metres and 500 metres events.
The Championships staged for the second year at Birmingham NEC as part of Fitfest 2024, the UK’s leading functional fitness competition, attracted over 1800 competitors racing in 178 categories over two days of competition.
As Durham ARC’s sole representative Roger got off to a flying start, taking the lead in the 2000 metres event on Saturday morning with a split time of 1.53.3 for the opening 500 metres, which put him into a commanding lead over his opponents from Bridgnorth Rowing Club and Seal Personal Training and saw him take the win in a time of 7.51.4, with an average split time of 1.57.8.
Next was the 500 metre sprint on Saturday afternoon against two more Seal Personal Training competitors with Roger again taking the lead from the start to finish with his second victory of the day in a time of 1.44.5.
Open and Women’s categories were contested with age groups including school year groups 7 to Sixth Form, Under-23, Senior, and Masters with ages ranging from 30 to Open 80-84 and Women’s 85-89, as well as Adaptive categories.
Results from the Saturday and Sunday competitions are available here.
The next target for Roger after BRIC is the 2025 World Rowing Indoor Championships in February which will be a virtual online competition, expediencies during the Covid pandemic having brought about revolutionary advances in technology enabling virtual competition on a global scale.
Since reaching the age of 80 in September he has set a new British record of 7.35.7 for the 80-84 2000 metres on the Concept2 RowErg and a World record of 8.28.0 for the 2000 metres SkiErg, as well as RowErg records for several longer distances.
After first taking up rowing 23 years ago as a means to improve fitness Roger has concentrated over the past 20 years on indoor competitions, including winning at BRIC in 2015 when he set a new British record for the 70-74 age category, and winning in the 75-79 category at the 2022 World Rowing Indoor Championships.
Photo: AllMarkOne