Muswell Hill's Sam Meijer won a gold medal for Great Britain with his crew in the men’s quads at the Junior World Championships in Rio.
On Rio’s beautiful Lagoa de Rodrigo Freitas, one of the pre-Olympics try-out events, Meijer's crewmates - Chris Lawrie, Josh Armstrong, Gavin Horsburgh - stormed through the field to beat the top national crews from New Zealand, Ukraine, Gemany.
Trailing in fifth position with 1km left to row, Germany and Ukraine clear leaders and expected winners, the GB crew turned on a powerful sprint. In the most exciting race of the weekend’s World Championship finals, the Under-18 quad’s produced a strong finish to take gold.
Meijer, who also won silver at the world championships last year in Hamburg, said: "I’m absolutely over the moon. Although we were down on the field at 500m we weren’t worried, we stuck to our plan. That brought us up to the rest of the field by halfway - and a hard-fought gold by the end."
The quads' victory was GB’s only gold, with silver medals in the men’s four and the women’s quads.
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