St Catharine's College Boat Club

Rowed Over

The aim for today was simple. Row over, and deny Caius III their blades on what could turn out to be a very successful day for their club. Unfortunately, the practice starts suggested that this could be a tough order, coupled with the fact that they were fresh from three easy bumps, whereas we had drained ourselves almost bumping Hughes Hall yesterday.

After a delay before the start, we pushed out a little cold. The start was average, and, as expected, we lost a little ground as Caius hammered away from the start. However, once we hit our stride, we held the gap at a length the whole way down First Post reach, closing slightly on Hughes Hall before they bumped Robinson ahead. They got a whistle coming up to First Post corner, but a push into the corner pushed them back out to just over a length, where we held them the whole way round Grassy. After this, a push round Ditton saw us move back onto station, and from there the crews oscillated from slightly inside to slightly outside station as we responded to every push they made, before crossing the line about 2 lengths apart.

It was a great race between two crews worthy of much higher bumps standings than 14th and 15th in division 3 (a strong case could be made that we're the two fastest crews in the entire division). Credit to Caius, who are comfortably the fastest 3rd crew on the river and were a lot more gracious after the race than I would have been if it was the other way round!

Overall, it's another disappointing (well, I guess unlucky is probably a better word to describe it) set of bumps for M2. It could have been so different if we'd been 1 foot to the side yesterday, and it's a bit gutting to see crews who we have shown we're faster than go up by significant numbers of places. However, we'll be back next year to try and finally get the set of blades we deserve at the third attempt.