St Catharine's College Boat Club

W1 came into the final day of bumps knowing that this was our last chance to bump Queens this year. After a rollercoaster of a week full of drama, re-rows, and soul destroying near bumps, we were going to give it everything we had.

We had the added pressure of a strong Kings crew behind us who we knew from sparring were of similar speed to us, and had bumped LMBC just before the railway bridge the day before. To complicate matters further, in front of was Queens was Clare who were on for spoons, but who promised us that they would do everthing in their power to hold off Queens long enough for us to get our bump.

Off the start it took us longer to get our first whistle on Queens than on previous days, but around grassy we soon made it two whistles. Around ditton Kings were getting perilously close to us, and even had overlap for a few strokes. We did not let this worry us and we made our move and pushed away from Kings. We got our three whistles on Queens at the top of the reach which spurred us on to gain overlap on the reach.

We FINALLY convincingly bumped Queens down the long reach not only with contact between our 2's blade and Queen's stern, but Helly actually grabbed the stern of their boat so the Queens cox was forced to reluctantly concede. We had worked so hard for this bump over three days and four races that it felt as if we had won blades! This bump moved W1 into the top 10 of Division 1 for the first time since 2010.

Credit to the Queens girls for some extremely close racing this week. They are a mentally strong crew who could easily have given up and conceded the bump on multiple occassions. Massive well done (and thanks!) also to Clare for holding off Queens long enough for us to get our bump, and avoiding spoons in the process.

I would like to say a massive thank you and well done to W1 for being such an amazing crew to train and race with. Thanks also to our fantastic subs some of whom stepped in at the very last minute, we definitely could not have done it without you. Finally, thanks to our coach, Georgie, whose ability to pick us up in the face of all the unexpected circumstances we had to deal with was crucial in spurring us on to get that bump.