A great showing from Champs for Winter League 1 on a sunny and still morning. In total we entered 5 women’s VIIIs, 2 women’s quads -composites with Cantabs and Xpress, 3 men’s VIIIs, one mixed quad, 2 women’s doubles, a mixed double and 5 single scullers as well as a men’s double. A cold but crisp day and lots of good times. The mixed ‘Double Trouble’ with Steve and Trish, were fastest in their Mas D category, the Budapest composite quad were second fastest in their category followed by Quadrangle. W1 were second fastest in Club A category and W2 won their Mas E category. Great to see the Juniors and Development Squad doing so well and look forward to seeing great things from them in future legs of the winter league
This month we have done a special feature on one of our men’s crews the Fearnoughts who are a new crew so great to see they had a good race and we look forward to seeing great things from the men in future as we also have the Argonaughts and Dreadnoughts so will feature them in future posts.
Willian Dulyea says: “We raced Division 1, start time 09:00. We finished 6th in our category. Interesting facts:
We were the second fastest boat in Champs, W1 were the faster if you consider unadjusted times. This race was first time the entire masters crew rowed together.
Tim J, our stroke seat, had this to say:
As a new crew we had rowed few more than 10 strokes firm pressure before the race start. The build up was good and the boat was running well on 29 SPM as the starting klaxon sounded. A spilt time under 2 minutes then was encouraging but even with great motivational calls from Charlotte at cox our boat speed fell off especially as we came out of Ditton Corner into the Reach. Overall stroke rate was consistent at 29-30 but we needed more cover to keep boat speed up. The last 200m was encouraging as we built both rating and boat speed which should augur well for WL2!
Crew:Cox: Charlotte S.
S. Tim J.
7. David L.
6. Will D.
5. Robert A.
4. Graham T.
3. Johnny C.
2. Gez
B. Squint
W1 got the new year off to a flying start with a swift first leg of the Winter League. The crew had been training hard over the earlier winter months and were keen to put all that training into practice. So, despite the bitterly cold morning, the crew dug in early on to deliver a set of punchy corners, having been set up with some beautiful lines by their cox Gemma. With the corners done, the crew settled into length on ‘the Reach’, before committing to a gruelling flying finish. The crew delivered an admirable time of 11:51.5, outperforming the Nine crews surrounding them and making them second in their Club A category, only 27.4 seconds behind the Cantabs second boat. Happy with their time, but never satisfied, the crew are looking forward to getting back into training ready for Winter League 2.
