WORCESTER'S Beverley Gough helped the Great Britain women's eight finish a fine fourth in the latest round of the World Cup in Seville, Spain.

The former King's School pupil, who was first reserve for the Sydney Olympics last year, has been training with the eight ever since.

Consequently the crew approached the Seville event with some confidence.

Champions

Their first race saw them take on Olympic champions Romania, who had also won the previous two World Cup rounds, Germany and Belarus in scorching temperatures.

Beverley, who is now based in London but whose parents live at Bishampton, near Pershore, said: "We had a really good, aggressive race.

"We raced hard all the way and managed to pull back on the Romanian team and go through them into third place, which we as a crew and our coaches were extremely pleased with.

"We watched a video of our eight taken during that race so we knew what improvements we had to make for the final.

"We also knew the Romanian were putting in a different crew so we needed to race even harder out of the blocks than the day before.

"This was achieved and we managed to stay with the pack until half way when unfortunately the Romanians had a bit more left and were able to pull away going through to win.

"We feel we have learnt a lot and achieved what we wanted out of the weekend. It was all a wonderful experience that I hope to repeat.'

The eight have now been split into two fours and trials are due to be held today for the following round of the World Cup in Munich next month.