A tight finish to the men's pairs race between two crews that are vying for British international honours at Strathclyde Park yesterday fully justified Scottish Rowing's decision to move to a time-trial based format for their national championships.
Rufus Scholefield and Henry Millar of Edinburgh University, who are in contention for the GB team for the Under-23 World Championship just edged out Joshua Armstrong and Gavin Horsburgh, the Glasgow Academy pair who are on course for the GB team for the Junior World Championships in a race that would not have happened two years ago.
Up to that point they would have been separated by age group, but the re-jig, introduced on a pilot basis last year and now embedded, means that the scheduling is based on performance time trials at the start of the meet, so that different titles can be won in the same race.
"It gives us good competitive racing at all levels with some of the juniors now competing hard with the seniors," said Amanda Cobb, Scottish Rowing's chief operating officer.
"While that's happening at the top end then in your 'e' finals and your 'f' finals you've got some of your novices in with other juniors who are coming on and getting more of a matched race, rather than being heavily beaten by these boys.
"It teaches them to race and compete as well. Everything's about proper racing."
That allowed the cream to rise to the top with Edinburgh University completing a double in the pairs as Maddie Arlett and Robyn Hart-Winks won the women's event while Emma McDonald of Glasgow University, their fellow GB Under-23 squad member won the women's single, Gary Wilson of Aberdeen taking the men's single title.
Only 18 months into the job Cobb said that while there was general satisfaction with an entry of 700 racers for the wide array of events taking place, with the age range from 11 to 71 and rowers of all categories accommodated in novice and intermediate events, attention is turning to making quads and eights racing as competitive in the championship races in future years.
"We are reviewing our competitions at the moment and the vision is to make a Scottish Championship medal something that is absolutely worth winning. If you've got a medal in your hand you have to have absolutely earned it," she said.
Cobb also felt the decision to open up the para-sports categories had been rewarded, saying: "If there was to be a highlight of the weekend it was to see some competition in the two para events properly for the first time today as a result of our decision to waive the Scottish eligibility criteria. That was really quite exciting."
Upping overall standards while increasing participation was the prime target when she was appointed to take charge of the organisation and its development programme as Mike Morrice, who is a year into his third three year term of office as Scottish Rowing president explained.
"My mantra has been professionalism. We've got money from GB coming into our development programme and we want to see rowing become a more popular sport," he said, noting that the funding attracted has increased more than six-fold during his time in office.
Morrice acknowledged that much of the introductory work for a sport that has an elitist image but is easier than most to take up, can and should be done using indoor rowing machines, resulting in a vibrant national indoor championship and the recent creation of an indoor rowing league, but that only a percentage of those who start that way will transfer to rowing on water.
Partly that is down to what he described as tired facilities around Scotland, but he noted that rowing was still Scotland's most successful Olympic sport last time around, citing Katherine Grainger as a supreme example of what can be achieved in emerging from his own club St Andrew.
"She got where she did out of our pretty poor boathouse. She was at Edinburgh University then rowed for St Andrew and did it from there," Morrice pointed out.
"If it's good enough for her..."
Rightly he felt no need to finish that particular sentence as he prepared to hand the next generation of up-and-coming rowers their medals.
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