The Club's Results

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)

It was a stressful start with a lot of wind and tapping to get into position on the reach. Sidney gave us a scare off the first few strokes, taking an early lead. I air-stroked, which threw off the balance and then saw Raf's blade running parallel to the boat next to me. Emma called us to easy and I turned around to see Raf holding her blade, which had come completely out of the gate. It took me a minute to process why the blade was swinging so close to my shoulder, and why we were stopped. Sidney gamely carried on racing, but having come to a halt, we felt it was futile to keep going.

We were hoping for a re-row, as we were all keen, but ended up having to race the clock down the reach (which is where the above time comes from). All credit to Sidney for a win with probably the greatest margin in the history of Uni IVs, and apologies we couldn't give you a proper race!

HUGE thanks to our continental bank party. Merci to Masset for the encouragement, confidence boost and jaffa cakes. Thanks to Ulrike for pointers and support during the piece. And finally a big thank you to Raf's lovely parents for the french cheerleading! Much appreciated. :) (Julia A.)

Pretty soundly beaten by a decent Newnham IV. We rowed alright, although a bit short into an headwind. We were on the towpath side, which was probably slightly favoured. We went about half a length down pretty soon, and by the kink there was almost clear water at which point, at which point Newnham decided to abandon all lane discipline, and move to the right and wash us down. We traded moves and Newnham steadily moved away, despite taking arguably the most adventerous line I've ever seen. In the end they were just a lot bigger than us. (Swords)