HARTPURY’s rowers raced to Henley Royal Regatta glory for an “oar-some” fourth year running after rowing down their final opponents.

The quartet of Hannah Cooper, Zoe Adamson, Holly Huggins and Georgia Martin stormed to the Diamond Jubilee Cup quadruple sculls for junior girls after coming through four rounds of tough racing at the world’s oldest regatta.

Forty nine boats contested their event at the 178-year-old Thames regatta, which takes place on a 2,100m upstream course marked off by floating timber booms, with crowds of up to 80,000 flocking daily to the riverside to watch the action.

The Hartpury girls began their defence of the title won in 2014, 2015 and 2016 with a one and three-quarter length win over Marlow Rowing Club, followed by a comfortable quarter-final triumph over Henley RC.

The semi-final proved much tougher as they fought out an epic battle with top British girls rowing school Headington. The defending champions led early on by a couple of feet before their rivals pushed through to a 3/4L lead at half-way.

But the Oxford outfit couldn’t break contact, and Hartpury began to creep back inch by inch. The lead was 1/2L at the Mile-Post and just a canvas at the 1 1/8-Mile before Gloucester got their bows in front in the last 10 strokes to win by a canvas, about six feet.

That set up a final with the Isle Of Ely, and the Hartpury quartet again found themselves trailing by 1/2L.

But not to be denied, they stormed back through to lead by half way and, roared on by thousands of spectators, raced clear along the enclosures to win by 2 1/4L in seven minutes 36 seconds.

The crew, which also won the Henley Women’s Regatta title two weeks’ earlier, received their prizes from double Olympic champions Helen Glover and Heather Stanning.

And Huggins, 17, said: “It’s unbelievable, it feels amazing. I only took up rowing in 2015, and I never imagined I’d be stood here holding a Henley medal two years later.

“We were down early on but we trusted our strength and rhythm to push back through.

“The noise along the enclosures was incredible with all the cheering and as we were pulling away we could really soak up the atmosphere.”

Monmouth School’s eight made it through the time-trial but lost out to Hampton by 1 1/4L in their first round, while Monmouth RC product Louise Hart and her women’s quad scull came through the time-trial to beat Tideway Scullers by 1 3/4L in the quarter-finals before falling to the Dutch national crew in the semis.

Monmouth’s Stephen Griffiths helped his London RC four beat Quintin (2 1/4L) and Northwich (1 1/2L) before missing out to Sydney’s UTS Haberfield by 1 1/4L in the last eight.

Watch all of Hartpury’s races at www.youtube.com/user/HenleyRoyalRegatta