A North East athlete will be able to take up the opportunity to represent Great Britain at the 2023 World Rowing Beach Sprint Finals this autumn, thanks to the support of The Inn Collection Group and its five coastal inns in the region.
Ryan Glymond from Cramlington will cox for his country in Barletta, Italy at the end of September thanks to the northern pubco stepping up and covering the costs of his participation.
Making use of funds available via the company’s Give Inn Back fund, The Bamburgh Castle Inn, The Amble Inn, The Commissionaires Quay Inn, The Tynemouth Castle Inn and The Seaburn Inn have all combined to get Ryan to the event.
Hotly tipped to become a future Olympic discipline, Beach Sprint is a relatively new rowing event, with head-to-head racing taking place in solos, mixed doubles and mixed coxed, quadruple sculls.
Raced in coastal boats, contests begin with a run from the beach to the boat, athletes then sprint row to a buoy and back before the race ends with one rower from each team sprinting to a finish line on the beach.
Ryan’s talent in the Beach Sprints discipline of rowing was discovered back in 2021 when he was one of several members of the University of St Andrews Boat Club who travelled to the British Rowing Coastal Championships and excelled on their first attempts.
Since then, Ryan has been a member of the GB Beach Sprints Development Squad and has become an invaluable character in the Beach Sprints racing scene across the country.
Glymond said: “I’d like to thank The Inn Collection Group and the five coastal inns that have gotten behind me so I can take up the opportunity to compete at this year’s championships.
“Athletes are required to self-fund through sponsorship to get to the event and it has been great to find such a supportive group who very quickly said they would cover the total amount I needed to raise.”
Explaining more about Beach Sprint, Glymond added: “There’s such an atmosphere about the beach sprint regattas that you don’t get at flat water events because it’s such a great spectator sport.
“The fans can see everything: the start and finish are in the same place; there are high rating and high-intensity sprints, all ending with a dive into the beach for a buzzer – what more could you want?
“The most noticeable difference in beach sprints is that the cox runs and that there is so much more to steering in the beach sprint format. The course has it all: a slalom, a 180-degree turn, and a straight-line sprint back to shore, trying to catch surfing waves.
“You’ve got to be constantly alert to lots of variables and this means the cox can make a huge difference to the result.”
The donation to Glymond is part of more than £30,000 that has been granted to worthwhile causes in 2023 by inns across the north of England and North Wales during the second year of the Give Inn Back initiative.
Driven by the teams at The Inn Collection Group’s properties with the decision of which organisations or endeavours to support lying with them, the fund allows the group to make a real difference in its communities by being guided by the people embedded within them.
Lewis Hegarty, general manager at The Seaburn Inn said: “I know I speak for the five sites when I say that we’re delighted to be supporting Ryan and making sure he is able to make the trip out to the finals to compete.
“We are all coastal sites and there is a great heritage in the north east of racing boats out of the shores, so there is a perfect fit between the beach sprint discipline and our inns. It’s brilliant that through Give Inn Back, we’ve been able to form this relationship.”
