PANGBOURNE College’s top male rowers put in fantastic performances at the British Rowing Indoor Championships to win two golds out of two entries, as upper sixth student Ed Digby continued his recent love affair with the competition.

At one of the biggest events in the British Rowing Calendar, the London Velodrome welcomed hundreds of competitors from international to amateur standard.

The list of athletes also included a competitive rowing debut for Britain’s most decorated Olympian, Sir Bradley Wiggins.

Having medalled three times in his last two visits to the Velodrome, Digby started proceedings for Pangbourne by producing a superb race in the Sixth Form Boys 2000m to fight off stiff competition from Adam Stephenson of Twickenham Rowing Club. Digby’s time of 6min 13.5secs was a second ahead of Stephenson, and 7.5 seconds ahead of third.

The Pangbourne student’s time would have placed him 12th in the 99 entrants to the Open men’s event, which included five current GB rowers and two other athletes who have won medals for Great Britain.

Having raced at noon, Digby had enough time to recover and join his teammates, Philip Garnier, Ian Blanch and John Pan for the final race of the event which was the junior boys’ eight-minute relay. Competing under the team name “One stroke too many”, the College’s quartet led from virtually the first stroke in a dominant performance to beat Bedford Modern School, which had won this event two years in a row.

Head of Rowing Mark Woodcock said: “Everything went perfectly to plan. Ed came under pressure in the middle of the row but held off the chaser to win by a second, and he beat 62 others, so it was never going to be easy.

“In the team event, the boys knew Bedford would be good because of their record here recently. We’d spent three or four really good sessions trying to get the changeover right and working out the optimum split. It paid off as we won by 34 metres which was relatively comfortable. To be individual and team champions here is a great achievement.”