National Schools

A meteorologically grim Sunday could not take the edge off what was an excellent weekend for the club as a whole in Nottingham.  Whilst there were some near misses, which might so nearly have gone the other way, the club came away with three golds and four silvers.  This put us 4th in the medal table (headed up by Headington as almost always at the moment), and highest placed of the boys' sweep schools.  More importantly, I think, this was the first time for a number of years when success was spread across all the age groups (with gold and silver medals at all three levels).  This is great testimony to the strength in depth of the club, and bodes very well for the future.

In more detail, The VIII rowed through the field in their heat to finish second, and so go straight to the final.  There, they narrowly missed doing the same, missing out on taking bronze from Radley by just half a second (Abingdon won in a new record time).  This was always our realistic aim for this season, in what was always going to be a very strong year for Hampton and Abingdon, so it was a good performance from The VIII, not least considering there were two boys in the crew for whom this was their first NSR final.

The 2nd VIII progressed easily at the head of their semi-final, but allowed Abingdon to take a little too much of a lead around 500m gone.  In a tailwind, this was hard to take back and to Abingdon's credit they held off two strong challenges, to win the event. In an unusual regatta season, we had not seen Abingdon for five weeks, and had to remind ourselves that, until recently, our target of medalling was looking tricky; this crew had come a long way since March.

The 3rd VIII rowed a great race to win the West cup.  It was nip and tuck all the way with Hampton, and again this was a race which was won in record time.  Many boys in this crew had had a difficult season (through illness or injury) and the result was all the more pleasing for that.

At Colts level, both A and B crews won silver in the eights.  Both crews finished strongly, but had left themselves with a little too much to do in the closing stages, missing out to fast starting crews from St Pauls (A crew) and Hampton (B crew).  Four boys from the A crew got the chance to put this right on the Sunday with a win in the Windsor Cup for J16 coxless fours.

At Junior Colts level this was our most successful regatta for a number of years (probably since 2004).  The A crew won silver, missing out by two thirds of a length to Latymer, and so having closed the gap on them since Wallingford.  The B crew built on their success at Wallingford, this time beating all comers to take the Monkton Bluefriars' Cup by clear water.