Olympic champion Andy Hodge teamed up with Alex Partridge to win the men’s pairs trial at the GB Rowing winter assessment at Boston, Lincolnshire on Saturday.

Hodge, from Hebden near Skipton, rowed with the Olympic eights silver medallist as his normal partner, Pete Reed, was recovering from the winter virus that ruled out a number of other top competitors.

After he and Partridge won in a time of 17min 3.41sec, Hodge said: “Anyone who wants to lay a claim to getting into the squad gets a chance to come here and take on the squad rowers. It’s a great sport to be in right now because we have so many good rowers coming through.”

He added: “You know that you have to put in a good show here or someone else will do it and may take your seat.

“We have more testing in January, February and then the GB Rowing Senior Trials in March so we won’t know for some time yet which boat we will be in next year.”