M1 – Second College VIII behind Queen’s M1:

Following on from strong performances in University Fours the Mens Squad has been slightly disrupted with Felix Wood (stroke of the first IV) going down with swine flu and myself having to miss a few days of training with family issues. This meant Piran Tedbury (Westminster School and 3 man in the VIII) entering to replace Felix and left us going into the Winter Head with having only done rate pieces the day before the race and less than a handful of outings in the VIII.

Despite this lack of time together the crew managed to put out two very strong performances indeed – reflecting the depth and strength of the squad already this year.

On the first row over the course we were slightly unsure of what we could achieve and as a result adopted the well tested Downing race plan of ‘go hard until the wheels fall off’. The result was a blistering trip down first post reach with the crew holding 38/39 for the first 30 strokes. Moving into the rhythm we maintained good speed on the boat but into the corners the
inexperience together showed with the boat speed dipping. A good rally out of Grassy led though to a strong Plough reach but moving into the Reach where we expected more of a head wind the lack of one somewhat upset the rhythm and we didn’t quite get the speed we wanted on the boat. Moving over the rest of the course was good none the less and we took an intent to ‘man up’ down the reach into the second race.

In the second race we lined up behind a Kings College London crew and leaving a 30 second gap we aimed to go out and chase them down. From the start to first post corner we weren’t quite as clean as we would have hoped and our time around to the Plough was 4 seconds slower.

However what we had slightly lost on the technical side of our rowing we quickly made it up in some really gutsy rowing turning into the long reach. Maintaining a strong 35 we moved on the KCL crew and coming through the railway bridge we locked our sights on taking them down before the line. A well led rate build by Rob Clarke (7) and Jamie Logie (stroke) in stern pair and a much more controlled perfomance from David Cobbledick (4) put us bows on stern of the KCL crew as we went over the line much to the excitement of the crowds on the bank.

The results placed us 12 seconds behind Queens and 5 seconds ahead of the pack currently led by First and Third then Trinity Hall, Fitzwilliam and Jesus.

All things considered the crew were happy with our placing in the rankings given our lack of preparation as a crew and in particular with regard race ratings! With training moving to a stronger water focus over the next 12 days we look forward to competing for the Fairbairns headship with a fully prepared and hopefully fully fit squad.