MORE than 250 crews, including three world champions, attended the Tees Rowing Regatta last weekend.

Alan Crowther, Naomi Riches and Katie-George Dunlevy, who won gold at the World Rowing Championships in Banyoles, Spain last year, were joined by Alistair McKean, who has been selected to help them defend their title in Gifu, Japan later this year.

Disabled athletes also took part for the first time in the event, organised by the Tees Rowing Club.

Rowers from Yarm School enjoyed plenty of success ahead of this weekend's National Schools Rowing Championships in Nottingham.

Victories went to the J14 boys coxed quad of Phil Noel, Ronan Burrows-O'Donoghue, Paul Anderson and Bola Ajekigbe, J14 girls Katherine Copeland and Bethan Walters in the double sculls and Bekki Rowe in the single sculls.

These three girls then joined forces with Vicky Kelly to win the coxed quad event and complete a clean sweep of the girls 14 events.

The J13 boys quad of James McCrae, Charles Cooper, William Cooper and Richard Les recorded their first ever win, while the boys J15 coxed quad narrowly missed out by a couple of feet.

Eddie Mills won the J15B single sculls event, and Richard Leigh and Danny Lonsdale won the J15B double sculls to make it a good day for all the school's junior rowers.

The senior boys quad of Alex Mack, Alex Leigh, Chris Boddy and Chris Melton won the J18 and S2 events with ease, but found the Elite event a bit trickier.

After a dead heat with the national vet champions from Tees RC, the Yarm crew won the re-run by a length.

Phil Gray won the S2 single scull final comfortably.