Tom and Emily Ford played central roles on a memorable weekend for Britain’s rowers at the World Championships in Belgrade.

The Holmes Chapel siblings both shone in the Serbian capital, Tom helping the men’s eight retain their crown and Emily making history as she and Esme Booth became the first British women to qualify two boats for an Olympics at the same regatta.

Emily was unable to follow her brother on to the podium, narrowly missing out by finishing fourth in the women’s eight, but was justifiably proud to bank a second Olympic quota place having earlier done so in the women’s pair.

“Fourth in the eight is a hard pill to swallow, fourth for anyone is hard,” she said.

“But to make history and qualify two boats for the Olympics is amazing. We’ll see what we can do next year.

“I’m not thinking too far ahead but it’s great to have qualified the whole sweep team, which has opened up a lot of seats for us.”

The British crew occupied the bronze medal spot with 500m to go in the Serbian capital but were reeled in by Australia in the closing stages, ultimately finishing just over a second outside a top three also including the USA and back-to-back champions Romania.

The men’s eight powered to gold, meanwhile, bouncing back from being beaten by Australia in their last World Cup outing to back up the European Championship gold they won in May.

Ford combined with Jacob Dawson, Morgan Bolding, Rory Gibbs, Sholto Carnegie, Charles Elwes, Thomas Digby, James Rudkin and coxswain Harry Brightmore for glory and will now have his sights set on upgrading the bronze he took home from Tokyo.

Gibbs said: “We learned a lot from the last World Cup.

“There are a lot of races in a season and we were wilting a couple of months ago but we have really pulled our socks up in the last few weeks.

“We had a process, we had a race plan and we really executed that.

“The job is not quite done, we have the Olympics next year, but for now we will celebrate this win and build towards next season.”

British Rowing is searching for the next generation of GB Rowing Olympians & Paralympians - could that be you? The Olympic Pathway programme recruits and develops individuals with no prior rowing experience who have the potential to become Olympic rowers. Learn more at britishrowing.org/performance-development-academies. Similarly, visit our website to learn more about our successful Paralympic Programme and register for testing: https://www.britishrowing.org/gb-rowing-team/para/. The GB Rowing Team is supported by the National Lottery Sports Fund.