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Peterborough Perfection for Novice Men and Women
Peterborough Summer once again proved to be a happy hunting ground for City crews, despite a much smaller entry from the club than last time around, as both the men and women won their novice categories on Saturday and Sunday. City 3 Men's 8 smashed the course record over 1,000m on Saturday on their way to a resounding victory, however due to the low number of entries the event was non-qualifying and so they retained their novice status. Thanks to the accomodating Peterborough officials the same crew was allowed to race at S4 on Sunday and demolished the field once more to end up with a point a-piece. Rumour has it this was a certain Greek lothario's last race in City colours, congratulations to Andreas 'the Turk' Lambrinos who everyone will miss (apart from those fathers who had to keep their daughters locked up during his time here). Race report from the chaps below...
The novice women's 8 ('Daisy') proved they were no weeds (groan) by winning a tight race against Staines on Saturday. Like the men this was a non-qualifying final so pots but no points, but hey, you can't put points on your mantle-piece! Well done ladies. On Sunday the women put out a scratch coxed 4 - 'Forget-Me-Not' - who went on to win their semi and pip 9's in the closest of finishes in the final to achieve senior status.
Other City entries included Ben who made it to the final in his single scull, Sam who put in a good performance in her single and Tagnut 4+ who made it through to the reps on Sat and Sun. Tim and Fernando made it to the rep on Sat and semi on Sunday in their 4+ against strong fields, and Steve and Dave made it to the rep on Saturday in miserable conditions. The City Men's s2 4+ went out in the first round and were grateful to see the back of Peterborough rowing lake!
Race reports:
We arrived at the lake and soon brushed away any doubts as to whether it was worth braving the not-so-summer weather for a 1K race. It was clear that we had to perform. Our fitness was up from all the training and hard work that we had all put in for Town Bumps. The pressure was on to succeed and we wanted ultimate glory.
Everyone was kitted up in their city colours, ready clean up those Staines in the straight final.
As we braved the choppy waters and headwind to make our way up the start, it became apparent that we had a failing cox-box. We neared the start line. I turned back to the girls and said 'we can do this guys, we know what we have to do'. Seeing everyone grin back at me, filled me with confidence. We had to do it, there was no other option.
City of Cambridge, Staines, Attention, and we were off. Our eyes were firmly fixed in our boat. Our ears were straining to hear the newly-formed husky tones of our cox Jeremy, shouting his loudest without a mic. We were feeling tidy and powered our hardest down the course. We were ahead, and we kept the lead. A final push for a power 10 saw us cross the line first and we heard a horn from the judges box. It was amazing we did it we actually did it, beat our opposition and did ourselves proud. After the amazement and shock we called our star coach Jo to inform her of the good news. Our time was 3.40, which would have beated all of those who competed in the S4. Novice 8! We felt like we could do it again and again! Cheers to our coach and our cox for getting us to this stage. Despite the race being non-qualifying, we each had our own medal - our shinny pots to toast to all our hard work over the past 8 months as Daisy crew. Bel
'Forget-me-not', the newly formed City women's Novice 4,
derived from 'Daisy's' stern three and bow. We arose slowly
on Sunday morning with rather sore heads (understatement of the year!)
after celebrating the Saturday victory.
Today was the first outing that we would row together as the forget-me-not crew. We rigged good old Sylvia and made our way to the officials. It was no go the footplates were dodgy so we retreated (managing to hit the official in the back!) and went to frantically change the shoes! With help from the others we managed to get some decent footwear into the old girl. With a plaster fixing the number to the bow it was take-two at the officials. As we numbered off, I think our cox, Jo, was the only one with any confidence in our boat.
Seated to attention in the middle of the lake we fired off the stake boat. We won to our great surprise and headed straight to the final! Luckily we had some time in between to rest our poor heads and refuel. In the final we were positioned in lane 2. Neatly tucked in-between two 99 crews. As we eyed them up at the stake boat we were feeling a tad nervous. We simply didn?t want to lose, as winning seemed way out of our reach.
We gave absolutely everything from the start. Just keeping ahead of 99's over the first 450m, it soon became a two horse race. Hearing that all important call 'I want that pot! Power 10' we lifted ourselves and surged past the cheering City crowd towards the finish line, 99s matching us. The beeps were so close. Who had won??! We silently waited at the bank, then we saw the other City crews running towards us, arms high in the air, had we done it... really? Yes! Despite contending with almost gale force winds, rain, four hangovers and a possible broken rib we had beaten off all the novice crews to become novice no longer! Forget-me-not, they will not! Bel, Amy and Becs.
City 3 were feeling a little disappointed when we saw the draw, since there were
only two other eights challenging us, making both days of NM8+ non points
qualifying races. On the other hand, it meant a straight final late in the day, which allowed us to
sleep in on Saturday and arrive at the course at lunchtime. The weather was not
nice at all - blowing a gale and raining for much of Saturday.
For the Saturday 1000m, we were all a little nervy but knew that the race was ours for the taking. Off the start the other teams stayed with us for about ten metres, then we started pulling away. The rating went up to about 46 and settled back to 38. We'd already left Nines and Northampton in the distance when Nines caught a boat stopping crab. We rowed on hard despite having no other boats nearby to gauge if we were going fast or not. We crossed the line, elated to have won our first Peterborough pot - for some of us, their first off-Cam pot. Pulling in, we were told that we'd done a 3:04 which was a NM8+ course record, and we'd beaten all the S4 and S3 as well as equalling the S2 winners. That made us feel like we'd earned the pots despite the lack of novice competition!
Martin arranged for us to row in S4 for Sunday, we picked up our shiny pots and watched Daisy's girls win their non qualifying NW8+ race.
As was expected, the Peterborough Summer Party involved copious amounts of booze, hot & sweaty dancing, naked pole climbing, and plenty of stuff that falls under rule "What happens in Peterborough stays in Peterborough".Racing S4 on Sunday, we had a semi at 2pm (ed's note - that piece of information could be taken the wrong way! ). The weather was still quite windy, but now often sunny. We were a bit disorganised and didn't get a practice paddle in. We were quite tense rowing to the start, knowing that this would be a lot tougher than yesterday.
Our start went to hell as our stroke and seven man had a problem exacerbated by the choppy conditions. Suddenly we were about 3/4 of a length down, in last place. We stepped on the accellerator, winding up and sustaining 42 and motored through the other boats to finish first by about a length. Our time was equal to the NM8+ course record.
The final a few hours later was harder again, with the other teams edging ahead of us off the start. CCAT caught a crab as we turned on the power to pull out a length on the field, but Twickenham wasn't giving up and pushed back at us, cutting our lead to three quarters of a length, but we dug deep and held on to take a convincing win. Again our time equalled to the NM8+ course record. The win meant that we'd not only lost our novice status, but gave us one point as well, putting us immediatly into S3 territory.
As we loaded the boats, the heavens opened, but we weren't too worried about getting wet from the rain, as we went and threw ourselves in the Nene. More celebration was of course required and this time the venue was the Panaha and the Radegund.
It was certainly an fantastic way to say farewell Andreas, our stroke man, who is departing for the Netherlands. Evan.