At the end of May, Hexham’s Chris Jacklin was delighted to win a gold medal at the National Schools’ Regatta.

However, his aim this year has always been to represent Great Britain in his chosen sport of rowing.

Not only was he successful in his selection for the GB team but he has come away with gold and silver medals from the international event, The Coupe de la Jeunesse, which was held this year in Grönigen near Amsterdam.

Selection has been difficult for Chris with his hopes last year dashed by a serious back injury forcing him to stop competitive rowing for six months.

Returning to rowing in September 2005 Chris was just beginning to regain his fitness for the first stage of selection in early November.

These early identification trials saw over 300 GB hopefuls compete over a 5km course at Boston in Lincolnshire.

Then followed a three day training camp at the Eton College rowing facility of Dorney Lake.

With his coach Dave Higgins unable to take time off work it was fortunate that ex Hexham Queen Elizabeth High School student and Olympic rower Matt Wells was available to offer accommodation and take responsibility for Chris whilst at this training camp.

The next stage was another 5km trial at Boston in February.

The results from all these trials and the compulsory monthly 5km and 2km ergo tests resulted in Chris being invited to the spring assessments, a five day residential course based at the National Water Sports Centre in Nottingham.

The objective of these assessments is to rank all the rowers and scullers and to look at possible combinations of crews for future events.

This involved three sessions a day with each session comprising of five or six 2km races.

After this arduous testing Chris found himself ranking eighth in the country.

With a couple of potential top ten athletes not present, Chris knew that this position was not strong enough, with the likelihood of only seven athletes being selected.

At this point he was asked to form part of a quad to race at Ghent Regatta in Belgium.

This proved to be a very successful event with the quad coming away with two gold medals.

This result, and more importantly, his gold at National Schools, determined his invitation to final trials for an international event in Holland, consisting of another five days of assessment.

Having been selected for final trials, Chris knew that to be selected for the GB team he had to prove himself consistently throughout the five days.

Under the watchful eye of Olympic gold medallist Tim Foster, who had come along to help assess the potential of these scullers, Chris worked hard to move himself up to a third place ranking and that coveted place in the GB quad.

With only three weeks to the event Chris returned home briefly before travelling down to London to train with the other members of his crew under Walton Rowing Club’s coach, Nick de Cata and Tim Foster.

Eleven European countries competed in the event, so on both the Saturday and Sunday there were two heats followed by an A final and a B final.

On the Saturday the GB quad won their heat comfortably but were very disappointed with silver in the A final behind the crew from Italy.

On the Sunday they once again won their heat but this time were determined to take that gold medal.

The crew from Italy had to make do with silver this time and the home crew from the Netherlands took the bronze medal.

The GB juniors won the boys’ and girls’ competitions making them the overall winner with 14 golds, four silver and three bronze medals.

It was a highly successful weekend for Chris and GB rowing.