In the end Christ Church Regatta was rebranded Christ Church Ergatta and our novices had to make do with indoor racing. Not the same, though, is it?

Finally we have the review of 2019, and a successful year it was across the whole Boat Club with wins for both men's and women's crews in regattas, in head races, and blades in bumping races.

Joe Grey, Men's Co-Captain

The senior squad came back this year much reduced, with a significant number having graduated this summer. A number of SCCBC members entered the trials system for OUBC and OULRC this year. Niels Wicke, last year's co-captain, continues the process with OULRC, while Augustin Wambersie remains with OUBC as President for this year — we wish them both the best of luck over the coming months. As always, the beginning of term was marked with a healthy intake of enthusiastic novice rowers, along with several experienced rowers to bolster the senior squad. We've also been lucky to recruit a couple of much-needed experienced coxes, although they haven't seen much of the river this term!

While term has ended, training will continue over the Christmas vacation to build on the work we've done this term. With Torpids being held a week earlier than normal this Hilary, it is important the squad comes back fit and ready to go at the start of term.

We'd like to take this opportunity say a quick thank you to James Wills, for his rigorous and effective coaching this term; Alex Bowmer, for his strength and conditioning coaching and injury treatment; and finally RS for their continued support.

This term has been unfortunately deluged with rain and outings on the river have been few and far between. That said, the senior women did manage to have a few outings in the new four and we are looking forward to doing some races in it next term.

Despite the lack of water time we are pleased to have retained a good number of novice women who are enthusiastic to (hopefully) get on the water next term. Their water training may be lacking but they have been dedicated to all the land training that we have offered this term and it has been nice to integrate the novice and senior teams earlier on by training together. Each week we have had strength and conditioning sessions and circuit training sessions for the whole squad and our lower boats captains Chloe and Hannah have been working hard to improve the novices split times on the ergs in preparation for the Christ Church Ergatta. This was a great way to ensure that the novices could start to feel more like a team and get everyone into the competitive spirit of rowing at the end of term. Although the women did not win their race it was still a lot of fun and a good end to a term of hard work.

Abby Hespe, Women's Co-Captain

To keep the team spirit up and integrate not only the novices and seniors but also the men's and women's teams, our social secretaries Meirian and Jamie have been very active in organising dinners and crew dates throughout the term which have been enjoyed by all.

We are all looking forward to getting on the water next term and getting everyone up to scratch in order to launch a successful Torpids campaign.

Neither Oxford nor Cambridge seem to have an influx of international superstars this year (possibly due to 2020 being an Olympic Year), so there were no obvious favourites going into the Tideway Fours Head last month. Results are shown below, although I've excluded the 5 s time penalties incurred by several crews for arriving late at the start.

Oxford and Cambridge results from the Fours Head. The y-axis shows the crews' times as a percentage of the fastest boat in each category. Open symbols for lightweight crews

Normally plotting the crews' times as a percentage of the fastest boat in each category helps to compare performances between coxed and coxless boats but this year the fastest coxless boats underperformed, so all coxless results are probably 1–2% too high.

The top OUBC and CUBC coxed fours were closely matched. Goldie A were 2 seconds faster than Isis A, but incurred a 5 s time penalty so Isis were given the win. The Isis D coxless four may have been the next best performance but there was little to separate the remaining squad boats.

The top Oxford lightweight boat, a coxless four, was well up with the heavyweight crews and their second boat, also coxless, not too far behind, and well ahead of the Granta (Cambridge lightweight) boats.

The fastest Cambridge women's boat finished 1 second ahead of the fastest Oxford boat. However, Oxford were carrying a cox while Cambridge weren't. Behind them, though, were a couple more Cambridge boats with the second Oxford boat some way further back.

As for the women's lightweights, the fastest Cambridge crew was 9 seconds ahead of the fastest Oxford boat, but again Cambridge were coxless while Oxford were coxed (and also just ahead of the second OUWBC coxed four). The remaining lightweight crews were clustered almost a minute further back.

So based on that, I'd say: Oxford Lightweight men and, to a lesser extent, Cambridge Heavyweight women currently have the upper hand, with the other squads evenly matched.

We have an unusually large number of University triallists this year. Augustin Wambersie, OUBC President, was in the Isis A crew in the Fours Head and also stroked the winning Hurley crew in their Trials VIIIs race.

Niels Wicke raced in the OULRC C crew in the Fours Head but didn't feature in the Lightweight Trial VIIIs. I think he may be broken.

Hannah Morrisey is trialling for OUWBC. She didn't get a seat in the Fours Head but was in the bow-seat of Morely crew that won their Trials race, which suggests an Osiris place is within reach.

Clare Leckie, last year's women's co-captain, and Emily Hoogkamer, women's captain from 2015/16 (now at Linacre), were the stern pair unit that powered both the fastest OUWLRC crew in the Fours Head and the winning Puppets crew in their Trials race. They seem to be enjoying their new freedom to focus solely on the rowing while others deal with the admin. Kan Li is also trialling for the women's lightweights.

The women's lightweight race is now relocating to London, so all six 2020 Boat Races will be contested over the Tideway course.

OUWLRC A in the Fours Head, featuring a pair of Catz ex-Captains as stern pair. Photo: JET Photographic

In Torpids, apart from the women's blades, the men's 1st Torpid moved up to 4th on the river, equalling their highest ever position, and M2 are also at their highest since 1993.

Cambridge once again took all four heavyweight Boat Races while Oxford fought back with wins in the lightweight races. Our only representative, Augustin Wambersie, distinguished himself as stroke of an unfancied OUBC crew which pushed Cambridge to exhaustion. Meanwhile, Catz Boat Club took off to the Italian lakes for their Easter training camp.

In Eights the "gentlemen's" 3rd boat once again won blades to consolidate their position in the fixed divisions while the women's 2nd Eight rose 5 places and were only denied blades on the last day by the crew two ahead hitting the bank off the start. All five Catz crews went up, resulting in a net gain of 13 places — our best result since 1998 — which put us second in terms of overall gain.

Catz Crews: Current Positions
(& highest– lowest positions, 2010–2019)
	Men		Women
	2019	Range	2019	Range
1st Torpid	4th	(4–9)	21st	(1–27)
2nd Torpid	40th	(40–56)	54th	(47–61)
3rd Torpid	—	(62–68)
1st Eight	10th	(6–15)	18th	(13–24)
2nd Eight	44th	(40–49)	55th	(44–74)
3rd Eight	60th	(60–89)	—	(75–79)
4th Eight	—	(88–91)

The table below shows the standing of College Boat Clubs based on positions of all their crews in Torpids and Eights. Catz move up from 14th to 12th, overtaking Magdalen and Jesus, but still 2 pts short of the 11th place we held in 2014 (which equates approximately to a change of one place in Div 2). Pembroke retain the top spot, despite not holding any of the four headships, while Wolfson jump from 4th to 2nd. S.E.H. and G.T.C. also made big gains, while Magdalen and Worcester took the biggest losses.

Anu Dudhia (email: anu.dudhia@physics.ox.ac.uk )