RAMSBURY rower Michael Evans is part of a 44-strong GB squad that will compete at the World Under 23 Rowing Championships in Lithuania this week.

Evans, 21, won bronze at the 2011 World Under 23s in Amsterdam in the men's eight and this year races in the men's four with Andrew Holmes, George Rossiter and Patrick Lapage.

The team also contains a number of rowers who have already won medals at World Junior or World Under 23 level, while several of the squad have also been training and racing with the senior GB squad.

The championships, held in Trakai from Wednesday until Sunday, will feature more than 800 rowers from 56 countries and give Britain's next generation valuable international experience as part of GB's Road to Rio programme.

This year's crop of Lottery-funded young rowers have witnessed the precedent set at last year's championships, where Britain won three gold medals in Amsterdam.

Those results led to Katherine Copeland, Constantine Louloudis, George Nash and Peter Chambers all breaking into the senior squad for the 2012 season after a gruelling winter of trials. and last month all four were selected for Team GB at London 2012.

Team manager Steve Gunn tempered expectations for this year’s competition, though, insisting that Great Britain were stepping into the unknown.

“Each year's team is completely independent from the team before,” he said.

“It is a promising young team of rowers and as always the joy of the under 23s is we don't really know what will happen until the racing starts.

“We don't know what the form is as we haven't raced the opposition and we're all looking forward to it.”

The senior members of the GB rowing team - including local medal hopefuls Pete Reed and Steve Rowbotham - are currently out of the country on tough training camps ahead of the Olympic rowing regatta.

Reed, a former Cirencester Deer Park pupil has realistic hopes of retaining the men’s four title that he won in Beijing four years ago, while Rowbotham who attended the same school but was born in Swindon, goes in the recently put together quadruple scull crew.