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All race reports for Rich Dewire

Event: Novice Fairbairn Cup 1998 -
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They had all kinds of crash and crab trouble.

Event: Nottingham City Regatta 1999 -
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A dodgy row in bad conditions.

Event: Nottingham City Regatta 1999 -
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Something of a wasted day.

Event: Bedford Regatta 1999 - College VIIIs
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Missing a race in the first round was less than ideal! We had a bit of a shocker, never finding anything that even vaguely resembled a rhythm during the short course. We lost by 3 feet - most annoying, especially as Jesus went on to win.

Event: Bedford Regatta 1999 - College VIIIs
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Their rows got better through the day, but weren't really as good as they could have been.

Event: Cam Sprints 1999 -
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Never dropping below 42 for the 300m course, we beat a crew of four very young looking guys from Star Club - highly amusing!

Event: Cam Sprints 1999 -
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We windmilled a bit and dispatched Corpus.

Event: Cam Sprints 1999 -
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We rowed well and had a fair amount of power, but we were a bit tense and didn't really let loose and go for it. Southampton went on to win, before being disqualified.

Event: Cambridge 99's Regatta 1999 - 1st division
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Hurrah! A return to winning for the mighty 1st & 3rd, always good to see. This was Dai's last rowing with us, and so we were determined to go out on a high, especially with the uncertainty that now loomed for the May Boat. Three rounds saw us rowing progressively better, although we never quite felt settled. Nevertheless, we had little difficulty, sending Dai on his way with a lovely glass tankard to add to his Boat Race medal!!

Event: Henley Royal Regatta 1999 - Temple Cup
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We came in as fastest losers after a scrappy row, so had to satisfy ourselves with nice lycra and Pimms all week!

Event: Fairbairn Cup 1998 - Senior VIIIs
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The 1st VIII had a good solid chunky row and pushed ourselves hard.

Event: Fairbairn Cup 1998 - Lower VIIIs
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They weren't too happy with their row, and felt they could have been harder.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Wednesday
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The 2nd VIII were going for their headship. They were far too strong for Maggie II and had them easily by Grassy corner. Excellent to now be the best second VIII on the river.

Event: Magdalene Silver Pairs 1998 -
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3 Michell Cup points. Top!

Event: Cambridge Autumn Head 1998 - Senior4 IV+
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We were severely impeded (~10s?) by three Vet IVs who were set off ahead.

Event: Cambridge Autumn Head 1998 - Novice IV+
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They were hit by a Barts crew, losing about 45s.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 1st division
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With us chasing, they never really stood a chance, and we caught them in the Gut, having to easy around Grassy, and thereafter not having a very hard race. 34 secs was not representative; it would have been well over a minute if we had been leading.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 1st division
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Rowing much better than yesterday, we were 17s up at the Plough and never in danger. Things going well.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 1st division
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We always knew this would be a tough race, but after Maggie dead heated with Churchill on Tuesday, confidence was high and we were very keyed up. Unfortunately, headwind conditions did not help us; it felt rather like we were too highly geared (or maybe just tired), and we were 2s down at the Plough. A wide Ditton left us 5s down out of the corner and people's resolve then flagged. The Reach was not rowed well and Maggie stretched their lead to the finish. Gutted.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 2nd division
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I didn't see this, but apparently they had little trouble in dispatching a poor Queens' boat.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 2nd division
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A better row from the boys today took them into the quarter final comfortably (despite CUCBC and everybody else getting the result wrong!) They were also fired up and clearly meaning business, but were more relaxed today and hence rowing better.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 2nd division
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Sadly their firepower was just not strong enough to maintain their run - Clare were by no means a bad boat and our 3rd IV were outclassed and well beaten. Not a great row, but certainly not a bad one.

Event: University IVs 1998 - 2nd division
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It wasn't to be. Dirk's seat broke (literally!) and the corner remained pretty stationary for what they reckoned to be about a minute. They were thus annoyed to lose by less than this, but from Emma's subsequent performances, they were clearly taking it easy.

Event: University IVs 1998 - Light IVs
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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.

Event: Head of the River Race 1999 - Senior4 VIIIs
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What a weekend. The fact that we rowed like shit and were beaten by Colleges like Robinson seemed small in comparison! In fairness, the preparation probably really didn't help. Oh well, we 'place-warmed' quite effectively, coming in at double our start place! Moral: I reckon some weekends are just destined to be shit!

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Wednesday
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We were fairly sure Downing didn't have what it took to get near us, but wanted to get Jesus today in order to have a good crack at Caius. We closed just a little, but Jesus pissed off into the distance after Ditton.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Thursday
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We decided that a hardening of the gearing was in order, to really fly at Jesus and put them under pressure early in the race. Downing were clearly no threat, having only avoided being bumped by Maggie yesterday because the LMBC cox failed to get them round Grassy corner! The big change in gearing, along with our carrying a mounted video on our stern, meant that we had a rather spacky row and the outcome was much the same as yesterday. Disappointing.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Thursday
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They rowed better than yesterday, but still not as well as they can. They took them down at Grassy.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Thursday
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Rowing as sandwich boat they came up against the might of Sidney Sussex, who they needed all the way up to the Motorway Bridge to catch! An awesome day for them - 2nd VIII headship and 1st Division status - very happy.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Friday
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Our tactics included 'row better' and 'take the video off'. We wanted to just be more relaxed really, but in the end nothing we did seemed to make much difference, as we again closed up to maybe a length but were then dispatched (Caius all the while rowing in glorious isolation with Jesus similarly nowhere). Very boring!

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Friday
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They sadly lost their chance of a bump every day when they met a pretty reasonable Catz crew. Those who had been bumped by Catz last term were certainly out for revenge, but they never really closed on them.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Saturday
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Our last chance to take out those Jesus bastards! We decided to again harden our gearing, although between them Julia & Rob decided to harden 2 notches instead of 1 without telling us. This felt very heavy, and although we were a big crew, even we struggled slightly. In the end it wasn't to be, Jesus again rowing away, and the speed order of the top crews being the same as the finish order. A slightly disappointing week, but a fair and worthy result.

Event: May Bumps 1999 - Saturday
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The 2nd VIII were again chasing Catz for blades, but couldn't find the extra boat speed, despite having geared up a notch. They closed slightly, but never got the hooter that might have urged them on to bump. Nevertheless, a fantastic week for them, and all credit due to a damn good crew.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Tuesday
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A big day, with the crew capable of going either way, and probably continuing in the same direction for the rest of the week. Sadly, they didn't have a great row, and were well within 1/2 length of Peterhouse when Catz got them, all the way up at the P&E. Gutting.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Wednesday
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The race was unbelievable: Maggie got off well and were clearly really going for it. They were almost upon us out of Ditton and we were clinging on all the way up the reach. Under the Railway Bridge they had a large amount of overlap, but their cox continued to miss as she steered for us. We scented victory, found rhythm and rowed away. A testament to the gritty nature of the crew: awesome.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Thursday
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An easier day: with more confidence we held Maggie off with reasonably little difficulty before they were bumped at Ditton by Caius.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Thursday
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Their heads were down and Kings really went for them, catching them around Grassy. Disappointing.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Friday
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Our defence of the headship came to an end. Caius in the end were just too powerful, and whereas we pushed off Maggie when they got close, Caius just kept coming, bumping us out of Ditton. Min-numbing, total dejection. Gutted. Just gutted.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Friday
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The 2nd men went down to a severely quick Caius II crew, caught around 1st Post. This was pretty much inevitable after the last few days.

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Saturday
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We faced an action replay of Wednesday. Except that this time they just managed to make contact and our fate was sealed. Annoying, given that we had escaped once, and were well inside distance on Caius at the time, being a very fit crew. Ah well, next year hey?

Event: Lent Bumps 1999 - Saturday
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They did well to hold off Downing II, despite them being within a gnat's chuff all the way from Plough Reach. Glad that they found it within themselves to stop the downward spiral and avoid the humiliation of spoons.

Event: Cambridge Head-2-Head 1999 - 1st division
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Not fantastic. Despite a reasonable row down and a better row back, we struggled to find togetherness and hence didn't fare particularly well.

Event: Head of the Nene 1999 - Senior4 VIIIs
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An awesome result with a win in S4, beating Caius and Emma on the way! We had a really solid row, at low-ish rate, with Caius directly behind. Although we lost ground through a bad start, we kept our cool and pushed off them constantly - a very useful skill for Bumps rowing!

Event: Head of the Nene 1999 - Novice VIIIs
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They didn't have a bad row, but were sorely lacking power, especially in the middle section.

Event: Pembroke Regatta 1999 - 2nd division
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They did well, having increasingly good rows throughout the day but unfortunately losing to a good Caius II crew in the final.

Event: Bedford Head 1999 -
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Although we had a really good first half, our second half let us down (this was possibly due to me being far from 100% and hitting some kind of 'wall').

At least we had a better weekend that Robinson, who succeeded in losing their fin, not stopping and ploughing straight into the outside of a corner, thus totally trashing their nice new Janousek! There but for the grace of God...

Event: BUSA Regatta 1999 - 2nd VIIIs
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Despite sending a mixed crew and rowing appallingly, Nottingham was again kind to us, and sheer guts got us a Bronze medal. Awesome! This had to be the first time ever that Cambridge University were represented by a crew rowing with dark blue blades! This was a really fun day out.

Event: Fairbairn Cup 2003 - Invitation VIIIs
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A pleasing result for the crew, whose members had a fair amount of past glory but not so many recent honours (with notable exceptions!).
Our main aim was to take on the FaT low commitment VIII, and leave the beating of 1st VIIIs to our larger friends in BPBC I (although we wouldn't complain about giving any of the first VIIIs, including 1+3, a run for their money). The college chaps had clearly seen the winning methods of BPBC in the past, and taken up the BPBC training mantra, but we outfoxed them this time round by actually having some outings. Rowing in the Karlisch was certainly a blast from the past and although the old girl is maybe getting a little tired and heavy, so are we, and she did us proud yet again.
The race itself went without major incident, rating 32-33 along the course before going for a series of up-ones down first post reach, which had the effect of managing to keep the rate pretty much constant! I was particularly pleased that I started to be in severe pain much later than last year - this year I reckon I made it all the way to Downing boathouse. The reach was probably our best section, and it was here that we made up the ground on our targets ahead, which we then managed to maintain to the end.
Overall, a good day had by all, and a great chance to get to know the current 1+3 members, while further enhancing the glory of "Trinity Boat Clubs Inc."!

Event: Great River Race 2005 - Atlantic Race Boat
Posted as: Rich
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The Great River Race is pretty mad.

Basically some bright spark decided about 15 years ago that there should be a race for traditional boats on the Thames. So they created this - a 22 mile race from Richmond to Greenwich. In keeping with the "traditional" theme, it was decided that crews should carry both a cox and a passenger, and boats should be fixed seat. Somewhere along the line, someone decided that Atlantic Rowing boats were somehow traditional - and thus we entered.

The race is run on a handicap system: each boat is "scientifically" measured to find out how fast it should go, and boats are therefore set off at such a time that everybody should finish exactly together. So the first boat (a comedy half barrel effort) had a handicap of 0; with a handicap of +3 we set off 3 minutes later, and a hour and a half later, the really swift boats with a handicap of ~90 got going.

Pulling nearly a tonne of boat is reasonably hard work, although we're pretty used to it by now. To do so for 3.5 hours without using your legs is something akin to cruel and unusual punishment. We set off with high hopes, but in retrospect I don't think we'd realised quite how hard it would be!

Nevertheless, starting 6th in the field, we got into a good aggressive rhythm for the first half hour or so, completely ditched two of the other three Atlantic boats, overtook the boats in front of us, and opened out a gap of about 100m over the third Atlantic boat and a smaller skiff. We had noticed that the other Atlantic boat had read the rules better than us, and their cox and passenger were switching with the rowers at regular intervals. Our suggestions that Bron and Sophie got on the oars didn't meet with much enthusiasm... Nevertheless we were gradually pulling away from them and were feeling good coming down the boat race course. Yay us.

Sadly around Chiswick Eyot we found that we were rapidly losing ground, at which point we realised we were pulling a large tree that was stuck in our rudder. By the time we had noticed and removed it, the two crews near us had come past and were about 100m ahead. We spent the next half hour or so absolutely pulling our guts out trying to get back on terms, but it wasn't to be. It became clear that their rotations were going to mean they could stay ahead of us.

After a while of rowing in complete isolation, around halfway we found that other boats were coming up on us - only a few at first, but increasingly many as time went on. What had become a long hard slog was transformed into a long hard slog with fun stuff to look at - all the difference in the world. We kept pushing ourselves as much as we could, and eventually crossed the line in 3:39:33 - a pretty creditable effort. The faster Atlantic boat beat us by 21 mins, which we've decided is not that much given that they only rowed half the race each.

As an event, it was all pretty cool, and in a more suitable boat we would be well up for doing this again - if Mr Blackburn can get hold of one of the 1829 boatrace boats (which start pretty much last), it could be one long overtaking party!

Lastly, we have to thank Bron and Sophie for making the effort to come along, and to those people who gave us a shout from the bank - it really made a difference. Bring on a proper length race (but let us use our legs!)

Event: Fairbairn Cup 2008 - Invitation VIIIs
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Good grief.

Event: Lent Bumps 2011 - Wednesday
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GET IN! Well chuffed.

Event: Lowe Alpine Mountain Marathon 2011 - 'A' class
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Wow. Great effort. Particularly like the fact that the organisers planned for this route to be won in about 11 hours. Smashed it. Am a bit scared of you now.