Former Portora Boat Club rower Holly Nixon has been named in the GB Rowing team to compete at the European Championships which will be held in Varese, Italy from April 9-11.

Holly, who has recovered from long term illness to take her place in the team, has been selected alongside Saskia Budgett in the Women’s Double Sculls (W2x) and she will be aiming to impress with Olympic selection up for grabs later in the summer.

It is an event that Holly is looking forward to competing in after a long time without competition.

“I’m excited about it. It has been a long time coming for me and I just have to keep everything crossed now that it goes ahead but I think at the moment it is all looking promising that it will,” she said.

The Women’s Double Sculls is a boat that is not yet qualified for the Olympics and they will be racing in Varese as a warm up to the final qualifying Olympic Regatta which is in Lucerne in May.

“It is a new event for me and I’m very excited about it, it’s a different project and there is still more selection (for the Olympics) after the Europeans.

“It is a good opportunity for myself and my partner to give the team a bit of a confidence boost that whoever does end up going to the qualification that they can get confidence from our result,” she said.

Challenging for honours will obviously be one of the goals for Holly next weekend but she says that they also want to lay down a marker ahead of that final Olympic Qualification Regatta as well.

“I think, ideally, one of the aims we have spoken about is that we would like to beat all the crews that haven’t qualified yet as there is definitely going to be some of the crews that we are going to be seeing again at qualification in a number of weeks time.

“Then as a strong nation there is the expectation that we have for ourselves to make that A Final and make the top six as a starting point.

“That is always the aim, to get to the A final first and then chase the medals and see what happens after that. We’ll see what happens.”