Emmanuel M2 had an extremely fast start, and gained about a quarter of a length on us at the beginning, but we had a powerful rhythm call after our wind strokes and began gaining back on them. However, we were maybe a seat down when our blades started clashing. After about 20 seconds of aggressive and continuous blade clashing, several of our crew (myself included) momentarily stopped rowing - while Emmanuel didn't. And we lost.

However, in the sparing we had just a week after this race, we proved ourselves to be the faster crew (despite having had 0 outings inbetween, while Emmanuel did), coming out on top on all 4 pieces we had.