TORQUAY'S Marcus Bateman finished second at the 170th Wingfield Sculls race.

The event was held over the 4¼ mile, 6.8 km, Championship Course on the river Thames from Putney to Mortlake.

The event dates back to 1830 and was founded by Henry Colsell Wingfield, a barrister, as the result of a wager.

The race for single scullers decides the amateur sculling championship of the Thames.

Three men, Alan Campbell of Tideway Scullers, Torquay based Marcus Bateman of Leander and Brendan Crean of Agecroft, fancied their chances.

Campbell is the GB's top sculler and had won the Wingfield event twice before, in 2006 and 2009. Bateman and Crean were both newcomers to the event, Bateman being the new GB successful double scull's partner of Matthew Wells, the Wingfield's winner in 2004 and 2005.

Crean has been the busy eighth man in the 2010 GB sculling team.

Campbell produced his usual blistering start, chased by Bateman, and was three lengths up at the mile mark with Crean a similar distance behind Bateman.

Conditions were atrocious from St Paul's to the Bandstand, and Campbell showed his worth, as he did after Barnes Bridge when things again got worse.

Remarkably he always kept his strike rate above his opponents, even as he approached the finish with a sprint at 42 just to prove his point, and won by nearly a minute.

Result: 1st Alan Campbell (Tideway Scullers' School) 22.34; 2nd Marcus Bateman (Leander) 23.25; 3rd Brendan Crean (Agecroft) 24.12.

IPPLEPEN'S Barnaby Stentiford was in the Great Britain team which has just won the EUSA Rowing Salver.

Their success came at the sixth European Universities Rowing Championships at the Bosbaan Rowing Course in Amsterdam.

The victorious Great Britain team picked up four gold, nine silver and six bronze medals with 146 points to win the overall salver.

This score was just nine points ahead of Poland, who had won the competition on the last two occasions, in an extremely close contest that came down to the last few races.

Stentiford of Dart Totnes competed in the coxless fours for the University of Durham along with John Ford, Lee Fisher and Stephen Jones.

In their heat they were second over the 2000 metre course in 6 minutes 43.67 seconds behind University of Zagreb, Croatia, who finished in 6:29.57.

With just the winning crew going straight to the final the University of Durham crew had to row a repechage heat in which they finished fourth in 6:27.68. The heat was won by Hamburg Universities, Germany, in 6:17.50.

Durham therefore did not qualify for the A final but went through to the B final where they produced their best time to finish third in 6:20.63. The B final was won by the Joseph Fourier University of Grenoble, France, in 6:17.39.

The A final was won by Kazimierz Wielki University in Bydgoszcz, Poland.