Now, having had a couple of weeks in which to relax back into to normal student life, the Captains provide their reports.

Boat Race crews have been announced and we have three students lining up in the Oxford boats over the next seven days: Zac Abel in the men's lightweights (racing on 20th March, i.e., Monday), Helen Nielsen-Scott in Osiris and Freddy Orpin in the OUBC Blue Boat, both on 26th March (next weekend). This year I thought I'd apply a slightly more formal analysis to the results of the various private fixtures undertaken by all the boat races crews to try and work out their relative speeds. If you don't want to know the results — look away before you get to the last page of this newsletter.

Bumps Charts

Hilary term got off to a rocky start with red flag preventing any on water training. Conditions did eventually improve, but this left us with very little time to prepare before IWL D. Despite this, we managed to field two boats in this race, with W1 obtaining a strong result of 5th. Two weeks later, in Rowing On, W2 received an equally impressive result, qualifying in 9th place out of 33 crews.

Unfortunately, this success did not last, with Torpids proving to be a challenging week. W1 fell nine places on the river, and sustained substantial damage to their rudder on the second day, rendering the boat unusable for the rest of the week. W2 were frustrated to have their several of their races cut short by klaxons, but despite this managed to bump Hertford II, and finished the week only one place lower overall.

Although these were clearly not the results we would have wished for, there are still many reasons to take pride in our performance. The progress made by both crews in a short space of time has been undeniable, with only two members of W1 having any previous experience in Torpids, and all of W2 having learned to row at the start of this academic year. This rapid progress, combined with the invaluable experience gained during Torpids means we are hopeful of mounting a strong comeback during Summer Eights.

The Women's 2nd Torpid. Hang on ... is bow wearing 'mouse' ears?

However, we know that significant work will be required in order to achieve this. For this reason, the last few weeks of term involved tank sessions to improve technique, and a series of productive outings, including one in which we rowed through Iffley and Sandford locks. This lock trip was incredibly beneficial, so we aim to be able to repeat this early in Trinity term, in the hope that the extended time on the water gives each boat more chance to come together as a crew, something which we felt was lacking this Torpids.

Hilary Term was a slightly challenging one for SCCBC. The term started off with the Isis flooded and deep into red flag territory, so the squad was confined to spending hours in the gym, losing much-needed water time but building up to a solid level of fitness. A weekend trip to Dorney Lake was attempted, only to be thwarted at the last minute by the sudden descent of thick fog. Thankfully, however, once the rains abated the river dropped quickly, and we were able to start getting crews out on the water 3 weeks before Torpids.

Unfortunately, Torpids didn't exactly go to plan. A fairly inexperienced squad that was a bit short on numbers definitely felt the impact of nearly a month's worth of lost water time across the end of Michaelmas and start of Hilary, and, when combined with already very lofty starting positions for both M1 and M2 (starting 3rd on the river and 9th in division 3 respectively) and a number of crews around us having notably strong years, this all resulted in a disappointing outcome. What cannot be faulted is the effort put in and determination shown by every member of both crews, with our highlight of the week being an incredibly gutsy row-over on the Friday by M2, chased closely by New College II who had overlap for the last 200 metres or so. Nevertheless, a difficult week for SCCBC but there's a lot to learn, and with a very large proportion of the M1 likely to be around next year we're hopeful that we can rapidly regain the positions we lost.

The Men's 1st Torpid on the Saturday

Looking ahead to the immediate future, the squad is very much looking forward to a training camp in Italy before the start of Trinity, where, fuelled by excellent food, no doubt some big steps will be made both technically and physiologically. Beyond that, we're also in the fortunate position of expecting the influx of a significant number of very experienced athletes into the squad for Trinity term, bolstering our stocks and hopefully contributing to a more successful Summer Eights.

From the various publicly available results I've compiled a list of 45 men's and 51 women's crew-on-crew match-ups, applied some maths (a branch of statistics called 'Estimation Theory' if you really need to know) and come up with the following speeds, expressed in seconds/minute, relative to the Oxford Blue Boats.

But first, some caveats. I'm well aware that crew line-ups change from week to week, particularly the match-race opponents; there are a couple of 'tuning' parameters in the algorithm; and I've had to use some judgement to convert verdicts given in lengths into seconds/minute. But I have run a check for anomalous results, and only one was (just) outside the 2σ range, so not enough to justify its removal (and, in any, didn't involve any Boat Race crews). I've also allowed for 'evolution' in the sense of giving less weight to earlier results.

So, after all that analysis, I conclude that the Oxford men's and women's Blue Boats are, within the error bars, almost exactly the same speed as their Cambridge counterparts; I predict two very painful Blue Boat races. For the reserve crews, though, Oxford seem to have a clearer advantage (after the Fours Head last November I thought the opposite would be true). I've found relatively few results for the lightweight crews, but the Cambridge men's lightweights do actually appear to be faster than Goldie, so I fear for the Oxford men (although the only result I have for them is from Quintin Head back on 19th January).

Apart from the Oxford and Cambridge boats, the other crews involved were Oxford Brookes (OBU), Leander, University of London (UL), Molesey, Imperial College, Thames (Women) and a random crew of Dutch internationals who raced Cambridge.

Oxford Brookes A won the (men's) Head of the River Race today, with Leander A second and OBU B third, so OUBC and CUBC can both reasonably claim to be in the top 4 club crews in the country.

Leander crews filled the top two places in the Women's Head a few weeks ago but I gather the top boat was a one-off collection of GB squad rowers so I've taken the second crew as the Leander A that has been racing (and beating) the Oxford and Cambridge Women's Blue Boats. Brookes' A crew were third then, but are given a faster speed than Leander A largely on the basis of beating the Oxford and Cambridge crews by larger distances, and the Brookes' B crew also appear faster than either. So among club crews, both women's Blue Boats probably rate 3rd–7th in the country at the moment (along with Leander B and the University of London).

Diary