The Club's Results

For two members of the crew, the 'taper' for this event began in July 2010. The other two members had rowed rather more recently, (including in my case a glorious victory in the "Scratch 2x round a buoy in Hamilton Harbour" by virtue of neither being a novice nor over 50), but suffered from the perennial problem of being far too short and fat.

After our extensive training for the event on Wednesday morning, the mood in the post-outing loafing-around-period/chat was a fascinating mix of amazement, disgust and despondency. It turns out that if you take 4 decent rowers, send one of them to start some revolutions, another to wander around America, and then reconvene 18 months later, you produce a four which rows like novices. More precisely, it rows mediocrely for 15 strokes, and then loses all core strength and coordination and drifts off toward anti-phase.

Given this context, we were quite happy when we made it to the start on Friday afternoon having only stuck the riggers into the (millpond-like) river a few times, and with a few isolated 'decent' strokes. We lined up on the downstream station, attacked it off the start and according to our very helpful shell-guardian Iain may even have gained slightly. Then we hit the wash under the railway bridge, most people's cores gave up, and we "strode" down to a more relaxed rhythm. According to the (possibly generous) reports of our large bankparty, we then drifted out to perhaps 2 lengths down by the Plough.
It's unclear whether this (surprisingly small deficit) was due to LMBC's carefully developed JIT (Just In Time) method of avoiding the banks, or because we were actually moving the boat for the first 1k. In either case, the river straightened out, Miles' back suddenly stopped him from breathing (no, we don't understand either), and we wandered our way down the course to finish a long way off to give Maggie their hat-trick.

Nothing more to say, other than to express my continuing disappointment that nobody outside the big red boathouse down the river is willing to take this event seriously and mount a challenge to the LMBC small boats machine.

PS - Time added as an approximate (+-10s) guess based on LMBC's estimate of their time. (Peter)

With two of our original "Gents" crew unfortunately in another country and at a seminar, we gained Aaron and Jacob to have a second go at uni fours 2010, having raced in their 2nd 4+ earlier in the week. The benefits of the new crew were immediately apparent; most notably, we could now keep the bow canvas out of the water almost all the time.
Our brief practise outing (an extra reach on the way to the start) was promising; Pedro and I didn't seem to have entirely forgotten how to row, and Jacob and Aaron were sending back a solid rhythm. We hoped the delicacies of rowing well, like actually catching and finishing in time, would come with the few km of practise we gained on the way to the start.

We moved away from the line remarkably cleanly, with the kind of power application I'd be pretty happy with after 10 outings in a four, rather than after 10 strokes of practise start. Settling onto a smooth, aggressive rhythm, we looked up to find that in spite of our nice rowing and Neil's early adventurous lines, Maggie were already looming towards us. As we had previously feared, whilst Maggie nicely fulfilled the first necessary attribute for a gents crew (a strong rowing history), it seemed likely they were most ungentlemanly in the others (being fit and having trained together)

The next parts of the race were relatively uneventful; we rowed along quite nicely, with only minor wobbles on the corners, Maggie plowed along much faster than us through the water but with some remarkably circuitous routes along the river.

Coming upto the railway bridge, their relentless charge had brought them to only a length or two off our stern; at this point, a big lift from us pushed them back a couple of lengths, but unfortunately I got a bit too excited by this and decided that the quickest route from Morley's Holt to the finish was a straight line. After we scraped all the way along two barges before pushing off, Maggie had gained to overlap on us. We set off at a sprint, just about matching their speed, and I realised that my last hope was that Neil was in fact a 'gent' after all and would fancy stopping for a drink after all this rowing. With them 3/4 of a length down and slightly to bowside, I headed across the river, straightening up just before landing at the P&E. Sadly, just before they would have ended up in the bank Neil pulled out his tenth remarkable recovery in the race and straightened up. With no more tactics left, we held them at a length until they reached their finish line.

I've now lost to the winning LMBC crew three years in a row in Light Fours, and continue to be disappointed by everyone else's failure to provide some opposition to some very classy crews; in two of the years we turned up with reasonable crews and were completely outclassed, and in the other year even Strawson dragging us down the river was only enough to lose by a few lengths.

Hopefully one year I'll actually do some training and get the captain to put the top rowers in a 4-, and we might finally manage to stop this LMBC small boats machine.
Alternatively, we could get the engineers to perfect some kind of remote-controlled and/or parking sensor based steering system, and some faster people could row without having to drag me down the course. (Peter)

With the discovery on Tuesday that Matt's forearms weren't up to holding onto the blade for more than a few minutes, an emergency substitution was necessary. Strawson was called up and, after a swift practise on Wednesday (to ascertain that we weren't going to sink) we were ready to race. We think we rowed quite well; catches were mostly going in, we were moving together surprisingly well given the 4 (or 5) potentially different styles of rowing, and both rate and power held together well; the strokecoach failed to record, but Joe said we were at 34+ throughout, 36 down the reach, and 40+ from the railway bridge onwards. The fact I didn't really believe him after the race is most of what makes me think we were rowing quite well.

Sadly my steering was significantly below my usual standard, wandering quite wide on Ditton in particular. Not assisting me was the power difference; even if I went ghost pressure, Strawson could pretty much keep the boat straight on his own... Apparently Maggie went wandering at various parts of the course, but that's not really much consolation.

Anyway, time for fireworks parties. Overall, we would probably have gone a bit faster with some training, better steering and a bit more length, but there's no reason to think Maggie didn't have an extra level if they'd been really pushed. Well done to them, I at least underestimated how fast they were going to be, even after watching them cover 2k in an uncontested race 20s faster than any other crew on Monday. 4 weeks to get the work down and get back where we belong. (Peter)

Solid rate meant we beat them in the second half.
The start was a bit messy but we eventually settled on a rhythm (no ratemeter though)
Good lines through the corners and out onto the reach, where we were 3 seconds down.
However the rhythm continued and pressure didn't drop and we reeled them in down the reach, with good ground being made by holding in the finishes.
After we crossed the line, wound down and turned and watched in disbelief as Clare took their final few strokes to the finish. (Thomas)

Much as Tom said, all the work on rowing long and flat really paid off with it coming together at rate really well and plenty of work going down in the water. After an impressively calm start, with only a slight wobble in the outflow, we settled into a good sustainable (too sustainable?) rhythm which survived quite well through the corners. 3s down was called at the Plough and Ditton, and with a call of "We can win this", from and probably only heard by me, we upped the pressure a touch and started eating away the metres. Through the railway bridge Tom thinks we were at our closest, having visibly closed; Clare got it back together near the finish, but too late.
I claimed to the crew that we'd won by 7s, and it seems the timers agreed with me.

Having steered surprisingly accurately on the course, I made up for it by crashing twice within 20m of the new footbrige. (Peter)

Fantastic stuff guys :). A slightly frantic start, a little on the spacky side (I probably contributed a fair bit to this!). Once we got a call on the finishes, we suddenly started settling into a steady and chunky rhythm which we held pretty nicely until the end. Awesome steering on Pete's part, took some pretty fantastic corners, and hats off to the lads for putting down an epic push in the second half of the reach! (Jeffrey)

Not as pretty as the one against clare. We beat them in the second half once again, but I felt less due to a really solid rhythm making our boat go fast and instead simply because they rowed slower than we did. Was a little worried as I thought they had closed on us and I thought their finish was right by the P&E as we dashed for the line. (Thomas)

In common with far too many races I've done for FaT, I was far more comfortable with our position towards the end of the race than some of the rest of the crew. However, this time I had a little justification, as Walton was just standing somewhere random near the finish, and we didn't actually have to beat Pembroke by 200m as Tom thought...
The result was entirely in spite of me going round the outside of Ditton (thankfully Pembroke followed me round), and mostly down to putting plenty of work through the bulk of the race, with fitness to back it up. (Peter)

Overtaken (Thomas)

I think Tom summed it up pretty well. We didn't row particularly badly or particularly well. We were just entirely outclassed by a fast LMBC four. Nevertheless, getting to the final against a brace of first crews, with an unfit midget who hadn't steered before, three guys who'd never rowed in a four before, and 2008 Mays crews of 2,3,3,4... I think is a pretty good overperformance!
Many thanks to Tom and JPD for some pretty effective coaching, and I hope all of the crew go onto great things in the next few years.

Finally, personal thanks to Tom, JPD, Flo, Sonya, and anyone else who managed to keep me between the banks and pointing the right way (most of the time) without developing any neuroses. (Peter)

I was a bit worried on first post reach, it looked like we were in for a close race. What happened after that I'm not sure, maybe we were better at cornering. By my count we were 9 seconds up at Plough, so we cruised (untidily) on the reach. A fair way off our 10 minute target, but if it's less windy and we pull harder there's a chance tomorrow. (Tom C)

Go off hard.
Crash.
Twice.
Still win.
Textbook. (M-C. Chung)

We did well to save ourselves from disaster. Maintained our pace on the reach, and still at 34 when we nailed the railway bridge. By far the worst thing that's ever happened to me in a race (except the time I capsized), we lost Phil's blade badly. I was terrified, and by the time we got going LMBC had taken the lead. So the fight or flight kicked in, and we spanked it off at 36, rising steadily to the line.

According to the ratemaster the time spent rowing was at most 9:49. I reckon without the errors we would've been 9:45, or 94.5%, which should please Ming and Bryn. (Tom C)

I noticed that Coker's stash of university medals was starting to get a bit out of control, and that was when I started a campaign to sort it out. I was successful in the Colquhouns sculling race earlier this year, but unfortunately couldn't quite pull it off today. We hit the grey barge relatively hard (he came out of nowhere (in the stationary sense) so I had no warning) in the Plough Reach which allowed Maggie to get back on distance. We then hit the little sign before the railway bridge pretty dramatically, forcing Phil to catch a boat-stopping crab. Not having been in that situation since I was a novice, I couldn't remember which way to turn his handle, so that took a while to sort out. This time Maggie were inside distance. We went a bit mental from the railway bridge, and won.

We were very keen to go under 10 minutes, and conditions were perfect, so I'm really sorry to the guys for cocking this up so badly. The clock on Tom's rate meter stops when he stops, and that timed us at 9:49, so we probably had it in us.

Fortunately we're all still here for another go next year, and Iain seemed amenable to the idea of setting it up to be stroke-steered. Someone lighter should also sit at bow.

P.S. I've just noticed that Tom submitted a report marginally before me, but I can't be bothered to remove the duplicated information. (BJ)

From Travisty:

"How hard is winning? My mantra is that every race is harder than the last, and it's never been more true. So let me begin a tale of sorrow and woe. In the first term we row in fours rather than eights. A boat half as big needs twice as much refinement and subtlety. It's a challenge, and many crews fall apart (or worse). At the start of November, the top colleges race in the coxless four, steered by a rower looking in the wrong direction. Trinity, naturally, has the only person in the university capable of doing this. The trouble was that Dan had spent his summer drinking and surfing rather than training, and had to be relegated to the second boat, a coxed four. So we got the charming and affable Bryn to do it. The preparation was careful, with much time spent distinguishing "left" from "right", andcalculating how to fit his unusually muscular physique into a narrow racing boat. The race itself is pretty simple: 2800 metres head to head with St John's. We'd established a lead of 5 seconds before finding out what Bryn had up his sleeve. Rejecting the usual convention of rowing in the middle of the river, he preferred to take short cuts through a 50 tonne barge and the railway bridge. The latter was more controversial, and resulted in a boat stopping crab, which left us firmly in second place with only 800m to go. The response was devastating, a lung busting sprint to the line at 37 strokes per minute. We won, but only only just. Dan's coxed four was more convincing, winning comfortably and stylishly. Celebration over, we were left to ponder the irony that swapping the two men would have made both boats faster.

- Tom Coker" 

The official verdict of 'easily' doesn't really tally with the view from the bank, but the fact that the official results come in at least three units is perhaps an indication of their reliability... (BJ)

The finish umpire said we lost by 2 seconds. Jesus were clearly a lot better than last year, and did a good job. We were a little shaky in the first part of the race, didn't deal with the strong wind as well as we might, but we stuck at it and gave ourselves every chance to get back into it in the second half. So I don't think there was anything wrong with the execution, it's more that we didn't get enough practise in, and I have to ask:

what if I hadn't injured my shoulder and missed two outings in the week before the race?

You can never, ever, say "we lost, but we gave it our best shot on the day so we can't complain". It just means you didn't train hard enough.

The trouble with these races is, if you win then you know that it's not important, doesn't mean anything, there's no big shiny trophy and the opposition probably weren't trying. But there's nothing worse than losing. (Tom C)

How could the light IV be expected to win as well as making a 'row-on' appearance in 'The Band of Brothers' (see photo)? I'm just glad the boys of FaT company made it out of Normandy unscathed. (Phil)

Can't remember a Trin light IV beating LMBC. Congrats! (Dubya)

Awesome - I only saw the very end of the race, thanks to my completely superfluous DUing role [/"impartial" cheerleader], but the guys held it together much better than Maggie, and looked well in control right to the finish line. Brilliant, & much to look forward to in Lents. ("Light weight" Lilie)

It was a bit windy, but no more so than when we did our long practise pieces. Good rhythm down first post gave us 3s, which we increased to 6s by the Plough after a couple of pushes and superior cornering. At this point they started to worry and went for it, so we only gained another 2s in the second half.

We rowed well and steered well, but hope to be even better for the final. Obviously very pleasing to gain 20s on them in 10 days, and even better this completed a clean sweep of 4 red crews knocked out by 1&3 this week. (Tom C)

Found a very comfortable rhythm off the start and it was very encouraging to hear Iain shouting pleased comments! The pushes all worked well - possibly losing our catches a bit in the windy reach - culminating in an audacious number of 'up 2's after the railway bridge.

Big thanks to a very large and supportive bank party. It made such a difference on the reach as the light four understandably goes a bit quiet when the work comes on. Final is against Jesus, Friday at 1530h: Come on down! (Dan)

I was jogging along with the crew from the railings, and so I could see both boats take Ditton. It was hard to tell who was up at this point, but it quickly became obvious: Dan's line was nice, the Jesus line was terrible, and the separation reflected that. Our guys continued to open up an enormous lead in a tough headwind on the Reach, no doubt spurred on by a Mexican yell or two, and from there took it all the way home for a comfortable victory. (James)

More windy than Wednesday, and enough to make things hard. We'd been working on pressing the finishes out a bit more, and this improved the rhythm down first post. Steering was better too, but we were only 2s up after they took grassy wide. Pushed well down plough reach, and gained another 2s on the corner.

With more urgency than against lmbc, we nailed it down the reach. Focusing on the catches before the 30 stroke push helped a lot. Don't know what happened to them, maybe they started too hard, but we took a lot of distance out of them here. We finished it off with a committed sequence of up 1's after the bridge, stretching it out to a massive 14s.

I believe this is the club's first win in this event since 1988, so well done us! (Tom C)

Paddle down a bit nervous, Jesus looked pretty good. Incredibly, the sun kept coming out which meant I couldn't see a thing whenever I looked over my shoulder - I sensibly didn't mention this until after the race.

And what a race! An absolute pleasure to have been in this boat - as Tom said, we really nailed the reach this time, despite the head wind. Everything came together.

I had a few goes at crashing (strokeside only just managing to thwart my attempt at the Grey Barge on plough reach) but somehow we once again followed a good line most of the time; Iain once again a very welcome addition to the bank party. As Tobias said - 'I've never been so pleased to hear a Scottish accent'!

The supporters deserve a big mention: It was so good to come round Ditton to a massive cheer, and receive an even louder roar of approval as we hammered under the Railway Bridge. Thanks guys! (Dan)

The light IVs division seems to be cursed for 1st & 3rd! As we have realised in training, the 4- we're borrowing from Aylings (until they finally finish building our new one) corners "as well as a Kings' VIII" in the words of Mr Thorne. However it does motor down the straights and it seemed to be a cat and mouse game of gaining during the reaches and losing ground around the corners.

The crew had a slightly manic start and it took a while to find our rhythm. We managed to put in some good lifts out of the corners and it was all extremely close until we clipped a barge around Peter's Posts which led to a slightly flustered wind to the finish. I think that even if we hadn't clipped the barge, it still would have been very close, but as it was, there was less than a second between us and it was called a dead-heat.

Needless to say, we were completely exhausted having given it all we had and now we were having to contemplate a re-row. Pembroke wanted to race the entire course, so we concentrated on just trying to relax and treat what was to come as a new race (as much as one can in that situation!)

We had a very good (if somewhat light) paddle back to the lock and lined up pretty quickly. Unfortunately our exhaustion really showed off the start and Pembroke just raced ahead, taking the lead to 4 or 5 lengths by the Gut. Will took a tight line round Grassy and we said a brief hello to the grey barge (although we avoided contact) and then had a rather awful Ditton. However coming into the reach, we managed to achieve more of that smooth Aussie rhythm and we started making up some of our lost ground pretty well down the reach. We had a fantastic lift to the finish and continued to close on Pembroke, however they just took too much of a lead in the first part of the course. All credit must go to Pembroke for their win, but i think we put in a pretty good show and should be proud of it.

Never again... (Rupert the Bear)

In someones immortal words "shit happens". Today it did. We certainly deserved to do better than that. Very dissappointing to say the least. (Dan)

We rowed pretty well for the first 2 minutes and moved up, then picked up a tree on the rudder. I am not lying to say that we lost absolutely all steering from the rudder from First Post to the end. I thought we'd still be OK. I was very, very wrong and for that I apologise. Serious credit is due to the crew for restricting it to just 2 crashes thereon (try doing this yourself with no input from the rudder).

Sometimes your luck's in, sometimes it's out. As long as we continue to capitalise when it's in then I won't complain too much. However, it would have been nice to have at least been knocked out when I was able to row at more than half pressure for the latter half of the race. [I couldn't, otherwise we'd have hit the bank again]

The conclusion: Never pick me or Thorne for the IV's - I think we are cursed and handing the steering to the 2 of us was clearly suicidal. If you want to win it, row for Maggie, but frankly, I 'd rather row for Oxford... (Ingram)

A smooth but hard row saw us pull away from Maggie, despite our close encounter with a barge and the bank on Grassy. Devastatingly, there was no finish marshal for LMBC, and so the race had to be rerun. We lost the rerow by 8 seconds, having struggled to turn strokeside corners. I know I'm not the only member of the crew who is completely gutted by this result. LMBC went on to win the final (quite easily, I believe). (JPD)

With the return to form of Mr Peck, the crew upgraded its status from 3+ to 4- and prepared for battle. However, despite best efforts at publicity beforehand the bank party turnout was poor, so much so in fact that the stroke seat from Mary G had deserted us and gone to support the 2nd IV. We rowed down to the railway bridge and decided on a start (best not to arrange these things too early for fear of leaking information to the opposition), retrieved our seat from the victorious 2nd IV and plodded off downwind towards the start.

We were pleased to find we had been drawn to start ahead, not knowing where the bottom finish post was, and as we paddled up into position gave a passable impression of people who might have rowed a bit, sometime, maybe even quite well, maybe not. The start however laid all doubts to rest as we careered our way under the motorway bridge and wallowed through the outflow. The stride was called, and we settled back to a leisurely pace (with Jesus closing fast) knowing that our superior fitness would tell in the end.

The corners were steered with unerring precision by Mr Thorne, with Mr Glass providing quiche (often even without prompting) as and when required to spur on the stroke side oars. Thus refreshed, the crew emerged onto the reach having made up most of the ground lost in the early stages. It was clear now that Jesus were flagging - their lack of race preparation and obvious inattention to the fitness requirements of the modern rower began to show as they wilted in the headwind, while the grim determination of Mr Andrews served to spur the Trinity crew on into the wind. By the railings we were comfortably moving away, and a disasterous Jesuan attempt to cut the corner half way down the reach only served once again to underline the dangers of not spending sufficicient time practicing the necessary line. Their fate was sealed, and as 1st & 3rd kicked for home at the railway bridge Jesus continued to recede. The final verdict, 15s. (Jon)

Caius I had beaten Jesus 'easily' on Wednesday and after studying the stats hard I concluded that if our boys were going to win it wasn't going to be by very much. I got Pickard out on the bank and briefed him. Sure enough, it was a battle royal. John Dent had described the crew as needing to be a high rating 'terrier', and Tom Rose took this on board and drove them f***ing hard. John E's awesome steering also did them well - at Ditton they were up by 1 second. The Caius boys were clearly a larger crew, unfortunately, and in the stiff wind on the reach pulled out a lead of 3.2 s. This completed the disappointment of the day (3 narrow losses in 3 semi finals), but it was a comfort to hear that they had had a good row - they all looked utterly exhausted. (Martin)

Emma were stacked with John Bull (under 23 and CUBC) and Tom Killick (Lightweight) and two big guys, and were a force to be reckoned with. Our four went off very hard, had much better steering and were deserving in being up by 3.5 secs at the Plough. This clearly worried the Emma boys, who shifted up a gear and romped away up the reach while we flagged badly. A good effort though. (Rich)

With only three crews entered, they ran the race as a head race. (Matt)

3 crews entered. We were drawn against Maggie in the only semi. Maggie didn't turn up. The powers that be took pity on them and somewhat unbelievably re-arranged the entire format of Uni IV's into a Head race 2 days later to suit the scum.

To be fair, they contained a couple of people from Goldie and were a lot better than us [we were the FaT 3rd crew] and so won the Head race convincingly although it was pleasing for us that we still beat Jesus' first boat.

Compare the attitude of the powers that be here to 2001... (Ingram)