We also have 9 students trialling for seats in University crews, and four of them were involved in the various squad Trial VIIIs races that took place over the Christmas break.

A back-to-normal Torpids is scheduled for 2nd–5th March (7th week) and we're trying to see if we can organise a Rowing Society Dinner for the Saturday evening. Catz have been laying their cards on the table by competing in every IWL event, but some of their Torpids rivals have been a little coy. Nevertheless, we look at some of the local form around our 1st boats.

In the ongoing countdown we now reach four people on 38 and 39 bumps starts, occupying places 14–17 in the all-time list.

Augustin Wambersie was our only representative in the OUBC Trial VIIIs race, rowing no.5 in the victorious Rohan crew. Angus Groom would probably also have taken part were it not for an injury. However, such is OUBC's strength that neither 3 previous selections (Wambersie) nor Olympic silver (Groom) guarantees a place in this year's Blue Boat. We have another two oarsmen, Jonny Davidson and Freddy Orpin, in the OUBC squad which nowadays includes a third eight which regularly competes in head races. In theory, only those selected for Boat Race crews are barred from competing in Torpids.

Having last year included a picture of OULRC throwing Cici into the river, I thought I'd better include this to demonstrate that they usually take better care of the more important bits of equipment. Photo: OULRC

OUWBC (and CUWBC) had to postpone their Trials race to January due to Covid outbreaks within their squads. Oriane Grant was the only Catz representative, rowing in the 2 seat of the Style crew, which defeated Speed by a length. Elizabeth Rees is also trialling with OUWBC.

The two Catz members of the men's lightweight squad were set against each in their Trials Race, Tom Wagstaff at 3 in Neptune while Cici Hong coxed Poseidon. Unfortunately this also meant that Catz' 100% success rate for our triallists over the past two years was bound to come to an end. Tom won.

Our final triallist is Kaylin Chong, a cox with the women's lightweight squad.

Six Oxford University boats were among the 231 crews racing in yesterday's Quintin Head, traditionally the first major Tideway event for VIIIs. In the absence of the top OUBC boat, Oxford Brookes crews took the first two places (OUBC having beaten them both, just, in last term's Wallingford Head). The fastest dark blue crew was what I assume was the OUBC 3rd VIII, who finished 11th (and would have been 5th if they hadn't incurred a 10s time penalty), followed by two OULRC crews in 14th and 35th places. OUWBC had a good race: finishing 32nd they were the fastest women's crew, 11s (over 12min) ahead of Tideway scullers with the OUWBC second boat 69th, 32s behind their A crew. The Oxford women's lightweights finished 106th, another 26s further back. Cambridge, whose women in particular have recently been using this event to lay down a strong marker, were entirely absent, so we'll just have to wait a little longer before we can start making comparisons.

CUBC are taking on Leander today, but OUBC won't be racing until the weekend of 19/20 February, when the OUWBC and CUWBC squads will also have their first side-by-side contests.

Torpids 2022
Starting positions of our 1st Torpids and last year's change during racing
Men's Div I 1 Oriel = 2 Pembroke = 3 St Catherine's = 4 Christ Church +1 5 S.E.H. +1 6 Balliol +1 7 Wolfson -3 8 Keble +2 9 Wadham n/a* 10 Trinity -1 11 Magdalen +2 12 University +2	Women's Div II 1 G.T.C. n/a* 2 St Anne's = 3 Magdalen -4 4 Somerville +2 5 L.M.H. -2 6 Lincoln +1 7 Brasenose +1 8 St John's -3 9 St Catherine's = 10 S.E.H. +6 11 Wolfson II = 12 Mansfield -2
* Not entered in 2021, so demoted 6 places

We've not seen Oriel on the Isis, although they raced at Wallingford Head last term where they were only just slower than OUWBC (i.e., pretty quick). Pembroke, Christ Church and S.E.H. have all been competing in the IWLs. Catz have always finished a few seconds ahead of Pembroke and Christ Church, but S.E.H. beat Catz by 12s last November. Balliol haven't raced in the IWLs but Catz met them in the final of Nephthys Regatta last term and beat them reasonably comfortably. Wolfson have won every IWL they've taken part in, but as a graduate college they've been in training longer and so tend to reach maximum speed earlier — Catz were 20s slower last term, but only 8s slower last week.

The Women's A crew racing in the gloom at the end of IWL-C}}

Of the crews starting around the Women's 1st Torpid, Lincoln (0.5s quicker), Wolfson II (same time) and Mansfield (17s slower) competed in IWL-C last week, Brasenose (3s slower) and S.E.H. (22s slower) in IWLs last term, while so far there has been no sign of St John's women at all, apart from a novice VIII in Christ Church Regatta.

Assuming division times also revert to normal, Men's Div I will be at 5pm and Women's Div II at 3:30pm. The Men's 2nd Torpid, who are now the 5th highest 2nd Torpid on the river, will start 12th in Div 3 at 3pm, chasing Oriel II. The Women's 2nd Torpid will have to re-qualify through Rowing On on Saturday 26th Feb, but if they do they'll be racing in Div V at 12:30pm. If there's a men's 3rd Torpid they'll have to qualify as a new entry, in which case they'll be racing in Div VI starting at noon.

Sadly, no video live-streaming this time — it was an expensive business getting cameras, and operators, set up last summer and only justified on the grounds of deterring spectators from turning up in person — and they haven't yet figured out how to relay the PA commentary online, so if you're not actually at the river you you might just have to follow along as best you can from posted text messages. I'll be sending out the usual evening round-ups to the RS email list.

Pos	Starts	Name	Active
=14th	39	Richard Copley	1989–96
=14th	39	Chris Ilett	1978–84
=15th	38	Charles Dean	1924–29
=15th	38	Joshua Morgan	2010–14

Richard Copley was a chemistry undergraduate who stayed on for a DPhil. He was a novice in his first year but rowed in the 1st VIII from his second year onwards, also coaching the women in 1994/95. Nowadays working on Developmental Biology at LBDV at Villefranche-sur-mer in the south of France (yes, the 'mer' here is the 'Med') and tweets as @richcopley.

Richard Copley and the 1995 Women's 1st Torpid. The oarswoman on the left is Emily Dana, no.22 on the list with 36 bumps starts. In those days, Catz boated from the OUBC boathouse, now the Univ boathouse.

Chris Ilett read physics as an undergraduate, moving to Materials Science for his DPhil. He started in the 6th Eight, reaching the 1st VIII as a post-grad, won blades in 1982, and was back in the 6th Eight for his last race in 1984. He also married the women's captain (I was best man at their wedding). These days he's Interim Chief Technology Officer at the College of Policing, based in Harrogate. I assume that means he knows better than to get involved with twitter.

Joshua Morgan was just here for a four-year undergraduate course in Computer Science, but nevertheless managed to accumulate 38 starts by combining rowing and coxing, winning blades from the bow seat of the 2011 2nd Torpid and again in 2013 coxing the Women's 1st Torpid. Putting his degree to good use he is now Forward Deployed Engineer at Palantir Technologies. Hang on, isn't that the big scary data analytics outfit? Er, anyway, sound man, Josh.

The 1929 St Catherine's Eight, with C E Dean seated second from right. On his left is P C Kimball, the Rhodes Scholar, who featured in the 2nd newsletter of MT 2020. Back then we boated from the Head of the River.