Thames Rowing Club is situated on the River Thames in Putney, London, United Kingdom and was founded in 1860. The club's colours are red, white and black in stripes, the white stripe lying between the red and black and being of half their width.
Current position
Of the three grand British rowing clubs (along with Leander Club and London Rowing Club), Thames has the largest active rowing membership and is the only one to welcome complete beginners. It has over 800 members, of which around 200 are in training for competition. Of these, approximately 60% are women, and almost 20% represent veteran oarsmen and women.
Thames is recognised by the UK Amateur Rowing Association as a High Performance Centre for women's rowing, with a programme to help top club rowers reach the British national squad.
Thames has links with several local schools, of which Putney High School is the largest, to encourage junior rowing and attract young people into the sport. The junior programme is becoming increasingly successful, with juniors competing at many levels in the sport.
The Thames RC clubhouse, situated on Putney Embankment is a treasure house of rowing history. In 2005, the club opened a large new building, named in memory of former Club President and benefactor Alan Burrough CBE, which provides extensive training facilities and boat storage.
Thames is one of the Founding Clubs of Remenham Club.
History
In 1860, the City of London Rowing Club was founded at Putney by a small group of men, chiefly clerks and salesmen in the city rag trade. They based themselves at Simmons Boathouse and a room at the Red Lion Hotel and their initial aim was the modest one of ‘organised pleasure or exercise rowing’. There were very few members at first, but the numbers rapidly increased, and in 1862, when club races were first started, the club numbered nearly 150. It would be 1864 (by which time the club’s name had been changed to Thames Rowing Club) before a growing interest in competition led to the club’s first recorded win, in a four-oared race against the Excelsior Boat Club of Greenwich. The club also put on a crew for the Metropolitan Junior Eights, started in 1865, and followed this up the next year by securing the Challenge Cup for Junior Eights at the first Metropolitan Regatta.
In 1870 the Club won at Henley Royal Regatta for the first time, taking the Wyfold Challenge Cup from the Oscillators Club of Surbiton and the Oxford Etonians in a race that, according to the Rowing Almanack, was ‘a pretty hollow affair, the Thames crew winning as they pleased from first to last.’ Over the next twenty years, Thames’ had its first great flowering, with 22 wins at Henley by 1890, including four victories in the most prestigious event, the Grand Challenge Cup for eights.
In 1877 the Thames Boathouse Company (Limited) was formed for the purpose of providing a boat and club house for the club. Money was raised by means of shares, the club and the company being kept quite distinct. The construction of the present Thames Boat-house on a site about 300 yards above that of the London followed and the building was completed in 1879 at a cost of over £3000. Thames was soon established as a mainstay of amateur rowing in London.
This early period was the time of the great Victorian amateur. Many Thames members were keen on all sports and the club itself also had an influence beyond rowing:
From 1866, Thames organised cross-country races around Wimbledon Common and Richmond Park as part of the oarsmen’s winter training. These are generally accepted as the first open cross-country events to have taken place in Britain. One eventual result was the foundation of the Thames Hare and Hounds, the first cross-country club, which would itself go on to an illustrious history and an important role in the birth of the Amateur Athletics Association.
Another addition to rowing training was boxing, with a ring frequently set up in the hall at the clubhouse. George Vize, a member of five winning crews at Henley, became amateur heavyweight champion of Britain in 1878 and a founder member of the Amateur Boxing Association. Boxing finally disappeared after the First World War, when the great coach Steve Fairbairn wound it up because of the damage caused to oarsmen’s hands.
Fairbairn was an Australian graduate of Cambridge, with boundless charisma and innovative (and highly controversial) views on training and technique. He was one of the major influences on the club and on the sport in general, becoming generally accepted as the father of modern rowing. Under his tutelage in the 1920s, and that of Julius Beresford, Thames reached new heights, winning four events at Henley in both 1927 and 1928, something which no one club has replicated in the 20th century.
At the same time, Thames was home to Britain’s greatest ever single sculler. Jack Beresford took Silver at the 1920 Amsterdam Olympics in an epic race with Jack Kelly, before going one better with Gold at Paris in 1924. He won the Diamond Sculls at Henley four times and the Wingfield Sculls for the Amateur championship of Great Britain a record seven times. Then, with Thames crews, he took three further Olympic medals: Silver in the eight in Antwerp, 1928, Gold in the coxless four in Los Angeles, 1932 and Gold in the double scull in Berlin, 1936. It would be 60 years before Steve Redgrave bettered his record.
In 1972, Thames became one of the first British rowing clubs to admit women and rapidly became the powerhouse of women's rowing, a position it retains to this day. Thames women have represented Great Britain at every Olympic Games since Los Angeles; most recently Elise Laverick won Bronze in the double scull at the Athens Olympics in 2004 and sisters Guin Batten and Miriam Batten won Silver in the quadruple scull at the Sydney Olympics. Since the founding of Henley Women's Regatta in 1987, the Club has won there 39 times.
Winning crews at Henley Royal Regatta
The following Thames crews (including composites) were winners at Henley Royal Regatta:
