Glasgow rower Rowan McKellar dug deep to claim a statement victory at the British Olympic Trials. 

The Lochwinnoch star, 29, laid down a marker for next summer’s Paris Games with a rousing victory alongside close friend Heidi Long in the women's pair event at Caversham. 

The pair struggled in Saturday’s time trial but McKellar had a strong feeling they would set the record straight on Sunday.  

“I’m just so happy, even after the time trial I went into this full of confidence,” she said. “After a bad day I was weirdly so confident and just thought please can we do the job. 

“I knew we could. We’ve been going well, 4km isn’t our thing and these conditions suited us better. I was excited and I’m super pleased we’ve done it.” 

“There’s still a long way to go as there’s a lot of testing to be done but it’s a nice feeling to have come through this.” 

Long echoed those sentiments: “We knew we had a lot to do to turn it around, so we just tried to stay in our lane, focus on the process and we couldn’t be happier with the result. 

“This is the first side by side racing we’ve done all year and we both love it. We love racing and getting against everybody.” 

McKellar finished fourth on her Olympic debut in Tokyo, part of the women’s coxless four that missed out on a medal by little more than a second. 

The GB squad returned home with just two medals in their worst performance for 49 years, but McKellar is adamant Paris will be a different story. 

“This cycle has been really successful and that helps with confidence going into Games: you have medals behind you and we’re not going to be up against anyone new,” she said.   

“It’s about whoever can get this year right and go into next year in a really good place.” 

And following a flurry of medals including world and European gold, McKellar and Long are widely anticipated to be front and centre of Team GB’s rowing renaissance in Paris. 

“For Heidi, it’s her first Games and as a team we were in a different place in Tokyo to now,” said McKellar, who is one of over 1,000 elite athletes on UK Sport’s National Lottery-funded World Class Programme. 

“Every person in this team is medal potential and that was not really the case in the last cycle. 

“So even though it’s my second Games, everything is different and I wouldn’t have had the same experience Heidi is having now because a medal was a little bit out of reach last time. 

“This time it’s in our grasp and we can go for it.” 

Subject to selection, McKellar’s path to Paris will continue at April’s World Cup event in Italy, with minimal crew changes expected thereafter. 

Despite her red-hot form, she is not allowing herself to think about boat preferences. 

“I’ll take any boat I can get in at this point, we’ll see what happens,” she added. 

“I think the pair, four and eight are going to be really strong boats, so if we’re in any of those we’ll be in a really strong place.” 

British Rowing is the governing body for the sport and is responsible for the development of rowing in England and the training and selection of rowers to represent Great Britain. The GB Rowing Team is supported by the National Lottery Sports Fund. To find out more, and to follow the team, head to https://britishrowing.org/