The Club's Results

Afer winning the Elite race, we were keen not to embarrass ourselves by losing in a lower category to the home crew. This final ended up being the second-last race of the day, after the Bristol IV had finished racing in their VIII. Our nerves turned out to be unfounded as we took a lead off the start and lengthened it to clear water as we strode to a good race rhythm. From that point Bristol were never really in contention and we took it home for the second pot of the day and the Cleveden Scaffolding Trophy (apparently). (Erica)

Bit of a disappointing race really - after getting all fired up for elite, and wanting to make the double, we took quite a lot of distance from them during the draw strokes, and never felt threatened. A good solid row though. Of course we'd never have managed it without the Mexican call from the contigent on the bank :) (Lilie)

Fresh from the elation of our elite win, we re-focussed, and concentrated on not embarrassing ourselves by losing the S2 final. We needn't have worried. We rapidly established clear water and continued to increase our lead over the course. I think they lost heart a bit, and crossed the line a good ten seconds after we did. :) (Amelia)

Probably our best race so far - certainly our best result! We were pretty nervous on the way up to the start, after being messed around and made to wait by Molesey for a good hour. We thankfully had a good start [this has proved to be a weaker point in some races] a nice stride where we took a bit of distance, and then held it on nice and steady down the course to beat them by a fairly narrow margin. AWESOME!! Afterwards noticed that they had decided to row/ponce with England blades. (Lilie)

We were nervous going into our first Elite (!) race, not helped by the red and white England blades Molesey had chosen to dig out for the occasion or the large delays requested by our opposition in both events.

Molesey were a strong crew and we were level off the start, then pulled away from them slightly on the stride as we settled into a good rhythm. A series of good pushes kept us just ahead and we lifted it to the finish to take the Elite pots by half a length. Non-qualifying though, so we remain S2 for the moment. (Erica)

A really cohesive and controlled row which saw us begin to pull away from Molesey during the stride, and then increase our lead coming around the outside of the bend. This left us around a quarter of a length up going into the final straight, and Lewis' "this is for your elite pot" push, along with the stagger at the finish saw us cross the line half a length ahead. (Amelia)

A large, glass, pink phallus was our prize. Well, I'm told it's in fact a "yard of ale", but you could have fooled me. Er.. an "interesting" prize, anyway :) (Lilie)

Definitely weren't expecting this. Just WAIT till you see what the prize was... (photos will follow)!

Have First and Third ever won a Victor/Victrix Ludorum before? It usually needs quite a lot of entries (from the same club) but it seems that at Bristol there was enough competition that nobody won more than two events. (Erica)

I've not heard of this before, but judging from a web search the Victrix Ludorum seems to be a prize awarded for 'best performance', or 'the performance of the day' or something along those lines.
Also, Catherine says this was awarded to the highest scoring club - a great achievement to have won it single handedly, well done guys. (Martin)

Go to the Bristol Avon Regatta homepage to see the magnificence of our thirty six inch pink phallic prize.

Apparently 'Victor Ludorum' is for men, and 'Victrix Ludorum' the female equivalent. A really wonderful surprise to win this at the end of a good day's racing. (Amelia)

Yes, "victor ludorum" means "winner of the games" in Latin and "victrix" is the female version of "victor".

bene remigavistis, puellae! (Classicists - feel free to correct my Latin...) (Smiley Mark)

Fuzzy Duck? Who are they? Well, they were old boys from some school or other, looked pretty big and not nearly as bad as you might expect.

The race itself was appalling. Although bow 3 had been doing a couple of weeks training in a IV, unfortunately Din couldn't make the regatta due to long standing commitments, so Jacob stepped in to fill the seat. Suffice to say the 20 seconds of paddling down to the start was not enough for us to gel, and despite a reasonably together and quick start, we fell apart horribly after about 10 strokes. I don't really want to go into the details of the race (it was very unpleasant); lets just say the combination of wind, choppy water, out of time and over rating rowing and a number of boat stopping crabs left us very wet and very embarrassed.

Fuzzy Duck went on to win the final by 3 lengths, making us the 2nd best in the category even with our agricultural rowing. If we could have rowed at about 50% of our best we would have won. Easily. This at least gave us some hope for Ross the next day, but as it stood we deserved a more severe thrashing than we received. (Phil)