Rowing & Sculling Boats

Away in France

I'm away at VirusBoats in France from 27th May to 2nd June. I'll be working. Hope you enjoy your bank holiday weekend everybody.

BUSA successes for Manchester University

All those early morning training sessions and the many trips to Chester have paid off. The Manchester University 1st men's Novice eight were fastest (of 75 crews!) in the morning time trial and then dominated the subsequent 1/4 final, semi-final and eventually the final on Saturday evening to retain the title of BUSA novice VIII champions for MUBC with an entirely freshman crew none of whom had rowed before October. Anton and Stuart, their coaches, were rightlly proud and a trifle overcome. Many photographs were taken.


Click this thumbnail then double-click on the blue title-bar of the image that appears to resize it.

Wonder if anybody managed to capture Ben Witt dropping his medal in the water.

The women's championship VIII five of whom learned to row this accademic year and almost all of whom were novice rowed really well to make the semi-finals where they beat a crew that had beaten them earlier in the day.

The frig rigged Junior 4+ made the final after having rowed only twice together in practice.

Then on the Sunday the big guns came out to play with the men's championship and junior eights. Here we saw some mature and sensible racing in the heats and semi-finals to qualify for the finals and it was exciting to discover that our racing starts were top class and putting us up with the very best crews. Both crews achieved 5th place in their respective finals. We got some excellent scalps along the way and were within striking distance of some better known rowing universities. It will be interesting to see if we can beat them at Henley.

To put this into perspective one has to look at last year where we had a first eight that didn't quite make the final and we had no junior eight.

All this would not have been posible without competition for places from below and the 2nd novice VIII, which sadly didn't quite make the cut, has to be thanked for their invaluable contribution to the overall success of the men's club.

The women's novice eight, which could really have been regarded as the 2nd novice VIII because the championship VIII were almost all novices, have to be congratulated for making the last 24 in the time trial and beating all other B crews and then racing really well in the semi-final before being eliminated.

Everybody helped each other and cheered each other and Manchester University made a great impression at this the biggest multi-lane regatta apart from the National Championships. Well done.