From the Women’s Captain
The Novice women continued their head race success with another strong performance on the tideway, finishing less than 40 seconds behind the LSE 1st boat. It was a good way for the Novices to end their Head Race season, and things are looking promising for when they move up to the senior boats next year.
Women’s team
The racing conditions for the fresher women’s race were not ideal and so the QM women pulled ahead at the start of the race as one of our women crabbed off the start. Determined not to let them pull ahead, we stopped and started again. This start was much cleaner and had a lot of strength behind it, allowing us to build the rate up. With QM women ahead by around a length, our fresher women put up a good fight and maintained good technique through the race and kept calm. This allowed them to gain on the QM women by around 1/2 a length but unfortunately they did not manage to overtake QM. They showed determination and grit through recovering at the start and hopefully they will come back take the win over QM next year.
Men’s team
Both university’s fielding a strong fresher boat this year the competition was always going to be tight. Racing back toward the boathouse both crews were largely level the entire way with QMUL having to take a wide berth around a buoy. In the final few hundred meters the boys found their grit and pulled ahead by half a length to take the win as was hoped for.
A beautifully sunny day led to excitement among all the crews, but particularly the Novice men
determined to dominate the other novice UH crews. After a hard winter of training the boys were
fitter than they ever had been and took to the water with much excitement. They raced an
extremely strong and clean race and truly gave it their all. As such they were delighted to celebrate
their novice VIII win at the UH dinner that evening giving Bart’s both the Men and Women Novice
wins showing an exciting future for BLBC!