Kit contract for boat race (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

Bromham business to supply rowing crews

9:00am Sunday 23rd October 2011 in News By Lewis Cowen

A company set up by Bromham milkman’s daughter Kate Giles has won a contract to provide the kit being worn by the crews in next year’s Oxford and Cambridge boat race on the River Thames in London.

The race is one of the major events in the British sporting calendar and clinching the contract is a feather in the cap for Miss Giles, whose business career began with her father’s milk round.

She said: “Getting up that early in the morning to help with dad’s round started me on a very good habit. I was always up at 4am on a Saturday.

“The habit continued when I went to university in Kingston. I took up rowing because it started so early and gave me something to do.”

Miss Giles’s parents, John and Janet, also ran The Olde Pie Shoppe in Devizes Market Place, where Miss Giles also used to help out when not studying at John Bentley School in Calne.

The couple were also councillors on Kennet District Council.

Her uncles, Frank and Freddie, are also well-known local businessmen and her cousins Jim and Edward own Roses the Ironmongers.

Although Miss Giles enjoyed her rowing, she never achieved international status like her friends Guin and Miriam Batten, the Dauntsey’s School former pupils who were members of the silver medal winning quad sculls crew at the 2000 Olympics.

Miss Giles became involved in designing and supplying training kit when she contracted pneumonia while rowing due to the clothes she was wearing, which were inadequate for the severe weather conditions.

She formed Crewroom, which designs and supplies technical kit for rowers and other endurance sports.

The contract to supply both crews in next year’s Boat Race came out of the blue.

Miss Giles said: “We had supplied GB racing for seven years and the organisers approached us about supplying kit to the boat race crews.

“To be an integral part of this historic event is something all of us at Crewroom are very proud of.”