Great Britain, with rowers from Oxford and Wallingford, finished top of the medal table at the World Championships in Aiguebelette, France, writes John Wiggins.

The climax was the men’s eights when GB and Germany renewed their battle for supremacy.

The British boat, with three Oxford Boat Race winners, Peter Reed, Paul Bennett and Constantine Louloudis, were defending the slender margin of 0.08 secs from their previous meeting at Lucerne.

Germany’s last 500m charge came as expected, but again Britain prevailed – this time by an almost comfortable 0.18 sec.

A similar late attack brought a bronze for the GB four, which included Oxford Brookes’ Scott Durrant and St Edward's School old boy, Stewart Innes.

There was yet more glory for Brookes as the lightweight pair, including Joel Cassells, won gold, but Richard Chambers had to settle for silver in the double scull.

To the delight of Wallingford RC, Brianna Stubbs, Ellie Piggott and coach Ben Reed came away with silver medals in the women’s lightweight quad.

The women’s eight was just outside the medals, with contributions from Katie Greves (Headington), Brookes’ Olivia Carnegie-Brown (Oxford Brookes) and Oxford Blue cox Zoe de Toledo.

The women’s quad were eighth overall and will need to qualify if Wheatley’s Frances Houghton is to reach her fourth Olympics.

l Teddies old boy Alex Simmonds smashed the previous course record by nearly 30 minutes, but had to settle for second in the intermediate3 single at the Great Ouse Marathon, being raced over 22km through the Fens.

His father, Gerard with Chris Thomson (City of Oxford RC) were the fastest pair.

And there were wins also for Oxford’s Falcon RC in the mixed novice double (Rich Ellis and Catherine Sage) and the WIM3 single for Retha Pretorius.