News

Posted: 20 November 2023

The Scottish Rowing Dinner took place on Saturday 18^th November at the Hamilton Ice Rink. This dinner was to bring together members from our community to celebrate rowing and to enable the presentation of two Fellowship Awards.

The dinner began with a fizz reception in the bar overlooking the ice rink where, coincidentally, the local ice hockey team were playing a game. There was a real buzz over this as many in attendance had never seen ice hockey being played live, what a treat!

The evening officially began through in the dining room where a three-course meal was served. The tasty food went down well and with everyone satisfied the speeches begun. The first saw Scottish Rowing staff - Cara O’Donnell and Ronan Welch - present four of the Scottish Rowing Award winners with their trophies. Congratulations again to Ailie Ord, Gregor Hall, Edinburgh University Beginner Women’s 4+ and Tay Rowing Club upon receiving their awards.

We then heard from Martin Claxton who presented Dame Katherine Grainger with her Fellowship Award. Katherine expressed how honoured she was to be receiving the award as her acceptance speech reminisced on her time as part of multiple clubs within the Scottish Rowing community. She brought plenty of laughs and a few tears to the room as well as instilling inspiration.

It was then on to Gary Bain to regale us with stories of John McKinney and present him with his Fellowship Award. Keeping his speech short, John, thanked his family for their support before speaking about how the rowing family have supported him through his years of service.

The speeches concluded with Scottish Rowing President Alistair Neill reading a short poem and thanking everyone for their attendance before everyone headed back through to the bar where people shared stories and caught up with friends.

A huge thank you goes to Alistair Neill for organising the evening, Hamilton Ice Rink for their wonderful hospitality, Ron Wallace for taking and sharing photos of the evening, Martin and Gary for presenting awards and to all those who came along. We hope you had an enjoyable evening.

Photo credits to Ron Wallace, more photos are available on the Committee of the Dee website.