Youth Olympic selection for Hollingworth Club rower

Jess Leyden

A teenage star from Hollingworth Lake Rowing Club will represent Great Britain at the Australian Youth Olympic Festival next month.

Jess Leyden, 17  has enjoyed much success at Hollingworth Club and will now follow in the footsteps of London 2012 gold medallist Katherine Copeland in representing GB Rowing at the event in Sydney.

Jess will row in the single scull, quadruple scull and coxed eight events at the five-day festival of elite youth sport which runs from 16-20 January.

The festival sees 1700 athletes from 30 different countries competing across 17 sports, and Jess will form part of a 20-strong GB Rowing team.

She has previously represented Great Britain at the World Junior Championships in an Olympic test event on Dorney Lake in 2011 and Plovdiv, Bulgaria in 2012 and also the 2012 International Junior Regatta in Munich.

Having joined Hollingworth at the age of 11, Jess scooped gold in the 2009 Women’s Junior 14 Single Sculls event at the National Championships.

Since then, she has added multiple medals across regional, national and international competitions, and received a Young Sportsperson Award in 2011.

Earlier this year Jess joined Grange School Rowing Club’s Emily Ford, who is also in the Youth Olympic Festival squad, to take Double Sculls bronze at the prestigious Jubilee Regatta against several more experienced crews.