St Catharine's College Boat Club

Overbumped Peterhouse II

It had been a good if frustrating term for M2 - a division win at Winter Head-to-Head and a solid showing at Newnham Short Course had been balanced by terrible weather cancelling all the other races and a lot of training.

We arrived confident, having beaten both of the crews in front handily at Newnham 3 weeks before. However, this is bumps, and nothing goes to plan. The start was predictably terrible (the cannon is so loud!), and we made almost no inroads into Clare during the start sequence. Once we did start to move it was too late, 5 strokes later and they had bumped Selwyn. Overbump time!

It's fair to say there's a small bit of history behind this chase of Peterhouse, and so a few cries of "remember last year...don't let it happen again!" from the bank lifted the crew, as did the news that Peterhouse had hit the bank on the inside of the gut. They were back up to speed by Grassy, but the deficit had been reduced to about two lengths. We moved just inside station coming around Ditton, and then pushed for the whistle out of the corner. At this point two and three whistles followed rapidly, the bump coming shortly after the railings. It was an overbump a year in the making, and sweet revenge for the three rowers returning from last year's crew.