Water result: Howard-Merrill and Gammond claimed rowing goldGreat Britain picked up their second gold medal of the Youth Olympic Games after rowers Georgia Howard-Merrill and Fiona Gammond won the junior women's pairs on Day Four in Singapore.
The duo held off the Australian pair of Emma Basher and Olympia Aldersey and the Greek team of Eleni Diamanti and Lydia Ntalamagka to triumph in a time of three minutes 28.60 seconds.
'We're so surprised, we never expected it at all,' said Howard-Merrill.
'We came out of the semi-finals yesterday in such a bad state because we got the fifth-best time and nearly crashed into the Romanians but it all came together today - it's so good.
'We were calm and we just focused on our own performance instead of trying to be the best. The race is so short that if we have eyes out of the boat trying to suss out what's going on, you just fall behind.
'We had eyes in the boat the whole way and had a really good start, focused on our race and not anyone else. Performance not result and the result's come, so it worked out really well.'
Howard-Merrill was overjoyed after the success. 'It means we'll have a good summer,' she added.
'We don't have to sit around thinking 'damn what if we'd won gold'. It's a really good end to the season. It's definitely better (compared to other titles) because we never have a tight competition.
'If we'd gone to the world championships we would've but at a local level, we don't really get any so it's so much more exciting.'
There was disappointment in the junior men's pairs final, however, with British duo Ed Nainby-Luxmoore and Caspar Jopling finishing fourth.
'We changed our race plan from yesterday having been beaten by the Greeks and we knew the strong part of their race after their start and decided to push there,' said an exhausted and downcast Nainby-Luxmoore.
Golden moment: Georgia Howard-Merrill and Fiona Gammond celebrate in Singapore'In pushing hard there, we tired ourselves out too much and in going for gold there, we missed out on a chance of getting any other medal.
'We've only been training since we've been out here. Initially, fourth place might have exceeded our expectations but coming into the end of the competition through the heats and the semis, we were hoping for more.'
On the track, David Bolarinwa laid down a marker for Saturday's 100metres boys' final after setting the fastest time in the heats with a run of 10.62secs.
Bolarinwa said: 'The race was quite easy and my timing was decent. I reserved a lot for the final. Overall, it was good.'
Annie Tagoe won her heat in the girls' 100m, posting a time of 11.78secs while Charlie Grice impressed in qualifying for the 'A' final of the boys' 1000m with the Brighton youngster running 2mins 24.74secs, the fastest time in the heats.
Sophie McKinna made the 'A' final of the girls' shot putt with a best of 14.30m, while Freya Jones finished seventh in the girls' javelin with a mark of 48.24m to also qualify.
In the pool, Ellie Faulkner missed out on a place in the final of the women's 200m freestyle by just 0.35secs, her time of 2:04:44 ninth-fastest in the heats.
source: dailymail
