Adam has written an account of the Senior men’s recent outing to Henley. This is a special place for British rowing and we always look forward to the Henley Regatta in summer when all the rowing clubs turn up wearing their club blazers, and non-rowers arrive to enjoy wandering up and down the riverbanks in this beautiful part of England – and to drink Pimms! When summer comes, we’ll take you to Henley with us- virtually at least. Here’s a photo from 2014 that will give you an idea of what Henley is like! The Boys
Fresh from a week of strenuous training, and some pretty good results at Peterborough (see Nene report) we arrived at picturesque Henley, England’s ‘must visit’ spot for serious rowing. The race was on Valentine’s Day, but anyone who was spoken for had to put their relationships on the back burner for the day.
We arrived at 9am—a pretty late start for us—and our hopes were high, by contrast with the low February temperatures. However, calamity struck when Jack and Paddy with the trailer carrying the boats got stuck in a 40+ car pile up and were stuck on the M40 for over an hour. The ‘4’ team were in a quandary as it became clear their boat wasn’t going to arrive in time.
However, as somebody once said –and a lot of people repeated it—“cometh the hour, cometh the man”: the Senior men’s coach OJ turned to the revered and historic Leander Club, which gallantly lent us a boat and oars. Cyril, Christian, Nathan and Ryan, plus cox Nat, were unfazed by this change in rowing apparatus, and with the help of the Leander Club’s pink blades they won the Senior category in the fastest time for a ‘4’ crew on the day. To top it off, they won another race and beat some very competitive crews.
However, it wasn’t all sunshine for the Warwick guys. The ‘8’ crew only managed to finish seventh, although to be fair they were competing in a higher division than usual and were up against the tough crews from Oxford Brookes and Nephthys. But, we learnt a lot and we’re looking forward to upcoming challenges.
Some of our winning Senior men’s rowers are in our calendars and films if you’d like to take a look!