Wallingford Head

4th Dec 2005

Both the new Sims had their race debuts and won many admiring glances from the boatie community but the admiration for the boats compares very poorly to my admiration for our crews

Our men's boat contained only three of our strong senior rowers and had four Christ Church Novices and yet they cam second in their division. They were beaten by St Paul's School which is pretty good, we were only 10 seconds behind them. Those guys will have raced more individually than our entire crew put together and will have all been rowing in one form or another for at least three years. St Pauls won the schools event at Royal Henley last year and have Ben Reed - the five time Boat Race winning coach of the Oxford Women's Lightweights. But who did they beat? Wallingford's Senior 2 men's crew came in 6 seconds behind Catz at their own race on their home water! Eton College fell before us and our Novice boat also beat a number of other notable eights including Nottingham University, Pangbourne College and Molesey (all Senior 2) Perhaps a little less interesting is the fact that they absolutely destroyed Queen's and the Christchurch Senior 3 VIIIs and (back in to the real rowing world) had no trouble despatching Abingdon School and Reading University's senior 4 VIIIs. The novice men were understandably very nervous going in to this race but found themselves performing far better than they had ever expected in stream conditions that not even the seniors (probably with the exception of Hutto) had ever experienced before.

The women's composite VIII had three girls from Pembroke and one girl from Merton in it along with our four top girls. It is sad to say that we weren't the top college boat at the end of the day, but then, we were beaten by Exeter can quite reasonably call this their home stretch as this is where they train; they therefore have a distinct advantage. Exeter came in 7 seconds ahead of us but we are not at all bothered by this. I won't go in to it too much here but some of the crews at Wallingford Head were a menace to themselves and everything else in the water - fish included. Unfortunately we came across two of these crews during the race. Despite Fleur's most strenuous efforts to clear the way and to avoid clashes, despite marshall's repeated warnings to certain crews there were two boat stopping clashes. If all the estimates taken are correct these clashes cost us about a minute and as you can see from the results this would have elevated us from 31st to around 19th. One crew in particular, Worcester managed to hold us up twice in the attached photo you can see Fleur encouraging the Worcester cox to move out a little further to let her pass them and the Nottingham University crew whose puddles are just visible in the right hand corner. It's all very frustrating but there is nothing you can do about these things and in the end this is not the stuff to remember.

So what is? Well of the four Catz girls in this boat two of them were novices when I met them this year (one was a Christ Church novice this year) two of the girls in the Composite were lightweights and we had actually only had this combination settled for a few days as unfortunately Nicole from Merton had to bow out at the last moment as a result of a back problem. Yet this crew hit a strong 35 at the start and finish and maintained a constant 32 throughout this 4.5km head race despite all the difficulties with the rather inept crews around them. Fleur has made a giant leap forward in her coxing and no one could dispute the grit and determination that this crew found. The men went out feeing like lambs to the slaughter and came in to dicover that is was they who were wielding a big knife around the place at crews that should have done much better. Pot or not, this was a great race for everyone involved.

So, all in all there is plenty to smile about (Nick) I look forward to our next run out which I think should be Henley Fours & VIII Head on Feb 11.

Crews - (chch indicates rowed for Catz in Christ Church Regatta just two weeks ago)

Men

S - Darren Chadwick
7 - James Hutton
6 - John Anderson (chch)
5 - Steve Wicks
4 - Dave Matthews
3 - Nick Powell (chch)
2 - James Draper (chch)
1 - Leo Masson (chch)

S - Amy Banham-Hall
7 - Caroline Barnes (Pembroke)
6 - Sally Bullock (Pembroke)
5 - Rachel Thompson (Merton)
4 - Clare Shakespeare
3 - Kate Stinson (chch)
2 - Louise Turner (Pembroke)
1 - Charlotte Aldritt