Another lightweight event, that has a small, but high quality entry. The size of entry means it will be a time trial for lanes in the morning, with a final to follow in the afternoon.
Cambridge
Cambridge has two crews racing this event, with one boat listed under the name of Olivia Alliott who was a part of the victorious Blue Boat in the 2021 Lightweight Boat Race at Ely. This is a clear indicator of the quality that will be in this boat. The second crew is under the name of Ulrika Andersson who didn’t appear in either the Blue Boat or the spare pair for the light blues. However, this should not be a reason to discount this crew as Cambridge is a club in fine form and with a correlation between squad depth and results, it would be a safe bet to assume both of these fours will be fast.
Newcastle
Newcastle University have a quartet in this event, who will look to get amongst the medals. Again, a programme with significant experience in boating fast lightweight crews, it will be interesting to see if this boat will carry on that tradition. Newcastle have been doing a lot of racing recently, competing at Durham and Marlow, as well as Boat Race of the North. Given that most of this has been done in eights, it will be interesting to see how this experience translates into the smaller boats.
Exeter
Exeter are a crew who haven’t done a large amount of racing since return to the water in March, so the speed of their entry will be hard to gauge. Nevertheless, they have done some private fixtures with local crews, so this boat should have at least some racing under their belt. Exeter tend to produce some tidy crews, and in such a tight field, crew cohesion will be key.
Surrey
The final entry comes from the University of Surrey. This is a small club, but one that is on the rise, and they will be in the mix with some big names. In terms of looking at potential from this crew, it is under the name of Leoine Kennedy, who was racing a quad at Marlow Regatta. They produced a solid finish in the B final, which suggests that this outfit could have the potential to rattle some of the bigger names in the field.
With little to no variation in terms of weight in the boat, this is an event that will go the way of the crews who are able to do the basics well. Given the status of the entries, the standard ought to be high across the event.
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