Dads of rowing champions take on charity challenge

Four fathers of rowing world champions are taking on a charity challenge along the River Thames.

Nick Digby, Rory Carnegie, both from Oxford, Hugh Elwes, from Hampshire, and Al Davidson, from London, aim to row more than 130 miles (209 km) through 40 locks.

The five-day challenge from 2-6 May goes from Gloucestershire to Putney and will raise money for the Royal Marsden cancer charity and Love Rowing, the British Rowing Charitable Foundation.

Mr Digby said: “I don’t actually know whether we can achieve it.”

They are dads to world champion GB rowers Tom Digby, Sholto Carnegie, Charlie Elwes and Freddie Davidson.

The challenge will start in Lechlade in the Cotswolds, before passing the national Team GB rowing training centre in Caversham, through to the famous Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race course in Putney.

Nick Digby lost his wife to breast cancer last year and is supporting the charity which helped treat her.

He said: “I was inspired by my children a few years ago to try and learn to row but learning as an adult is extremely difficult.”

He jokingly said he can “sort of paddle up and down a bit” but the team's rowing experience was “very limited”.

“We’ve had very little time in the boat together, we’ve never sat in a boat for more than three hours and we are going to be sitting... for up to 10 hours a day, five days in a row.

"I don’t actually know whether we can achieve it."

Hugh Elwes said: “We’ve all been standing on the towpaths for the last 10 years watching our sons do amazing things and we all realised none of us had really rowed.

“It is a formidable challenge... The boys have been encouraging us and they are going to come down... and maybe even jump in a boat and row alongside us which will be fun."

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