St Catharine's College Boat Club

We went into today certain of nothing, but able to guess quite a lot.  It always looked likely that Peterhouse would bump King's quickly and leave us nothing to aim for, and we knew Emma would think they had a good chance of a quick bump on us.  We started hard and kept on station with both crews at first, but though committed our rowing was far from our best, and sure enough, Peterhouse bumped King's and cleared out of our way just in time on First Post corner.  Emma had taken in a lot of ground over the last part of First Post Reach and around the corner, and early in the Gut they came to quarter of a length, and then a canvas.  And there they stayed; for two full minutes we held them off, around Grassy, past the Plough, and into Ditton Corner.  At times they came to within centimetres, and at other moments we pushed away from them again.  They wouldn't break, however, and eventually we were forced to take Ditton wide to avoid them, giving them the racing line and an opportunity to take in those final two feet and get the bump.  We can, and will, row better the rest of this week, but today was by far the gutsiest performance I've ever seen from M1, and in some ways we are prouder of this row than if we had bumped.

And thanks to James Wagstaff you can relive the excitement from the comfort of your own home: https://youtu.be/m1xqRIHQSuE