Eleanor Brinkhoff: From Dundee Fresher to European Champion
After winning bronze at last year’s World Rowing Championships, Eleanor Brinkhoff is ready to get back to racing on the international stage
Credit: Benedict Tufnell
Dundee to Caversham is a long journey. It’s even further when you go via Australia.
11 years ago, rowing was one of dozens of sports that Eleanor Brinkhoff signed up to at Dundee University’s Freshers Fair. Just like thousands of students up and down the country, the 2025 European Champion put her name down for just about everything under the sun as committee members looked to entice the latest batch of members.
Rowing wasn’t completely unfamiliar to Brinkhoff. It runs in the family.
“My grandad rowed,” explained Brinkhoff, who won bronze in the Women’s Eight at the 2025 World Rowing championships.
“I coxed him when I was around eight years old when I went to visit him, he’s from Germany. I gave all the sports a go, but decided that rowing was new, different, and I stuck with it.”
Dundee University Boat Club calls the River Tay home. Despite its unique charms, Brinkhoff has made a career out of the sport.
“Dundee was pretty crazy because we didn’t have a pontoon. “It wasn’t really a rowing university in any sense of the imagination back then. We were wading into the river, sometimes waist deep, to get our boats out; we didn’t have any facilities up there.”
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Racing at Dundee culminated in a successful campaign at Henley Women’s Regatta. Brinkhoff and her crew reached the final of The Frank V Harry Cup for Development Coxed Fours, after beating Bath University, Edinburgh University, and Agecroft Rowing Club, before racing her future club, Tideway Scullers School.
While soaking in the Henley Women’s atmosphere, Brinkhoff got a call about a job at Gippsland Grammar School in Australia. Just like that, the next chapter was starting to write itself. Alongside getting stuck into 18 coaching sessions a week, the Cheltenham native kept up with training, picking up another blade and also got stuck into racing down under. This included the Australian National Championships, where she won a silver medal.
Brinkhoff still keeps up to date with the results of the school she was coaching with, and she’s delighted to see that this year has been a good one for Gippsland.
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After stints with Tideway Scullers and Leander Club, Brinkhoff settled into Caversham in December 2023. A senior team debut would come the following year at World Rowing Cup III in Poznan, Poland, where she placed fifth in the Women’s Four, a boat she’ll return to in Seville for the first time in two years. After a long winter, Brinkhoff and the crew are ready to clock in for international racing.
“It’s been a hard winter, and now we’re at the fun bit of the year, so I’m excited to get going.
Some of the Trials have gone well this season, which is exciting. Camp is always a good break from Caversham, but generally, it’s a long slog in the small boats in the cold, so it’s nice that the weather will start to change and we get to race overseas.
“It’s fun to be in a different boat class. I rowed the Pair and the Eight last year, so it’s nice to do the other one! It’s a smaller group with new faces, so it’s nice to get that up and running without too much pressure on it either.
Brinkhoff will race in a new-look Women’s Four. Off the back of a historic win in the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race, Sarah Marshall will race in red, white, and blue for the first time. Molesey Boat Club’s Angharad Broughton, who recently travelled to the Windermere Cup as a reserve, and Holly Youd will also make their first appearances. Youd is a previous World Champion, having won gold in the U23 competition two summers ago.
“I’m excited to have a bit of consistency and have a project going. Progress isn’t linear, but I think to work things out and see yourself progressing in that crew is gun. I’m looking forward to seeing what we can do on an international stage.”
“If I told myself 10 years ago that I would be racing for Great Britain, I wouldn’t really have believed it. To have another season to go again is really fun.”
