One of the major early markers of the season, the Fours Head is the first major race on the Tideway to cover the full 6.8km Championship course from Mortlake to Putney. The J18 4x event has been split into two brackets; Championship and Challenge. This should help to produce some close racing by eliminating the larger disparities sometimes seen between crews as all of the top ranked junior quads are racing in the Championship event. Nevertheless, the Challenge category has attracted a substantial entry of 31 crews from all around the country who will be looking for a good result. As with most London-based races, all crews will face the challenge of racing on the Tideway, and especially without a cox, how well a crews steers and stays out of trouble are also key in producing a good result.
St Paul’s School
One of the standout names of the draw, St Pauls have four quads entered into this particular category. The first comes under the name of Craig-McFeely who stroked the St Pauls 2nd ranked crew, the 4+ at the recent Head of the Charles Regatta, where they finished 10th, only two places behind Shrewsbury’s top ranked crew at that event. In terms of sculling, at Wallingford LDS, quads under this name finished 3/4 in Op 4x and 8th/9 in J18 4x. The second St Pauls crew comes under the name of Harray. He placed 25th in J17 1x at Wallingford LDS and a quad under his name placed 4th/4 in Op 4x at Wallingford so it will be interesting to see how this crew has stepped on since then. The final two quads are under the names Ackrim and Kwok. Both these guys were in the J15 Ch 8 from National Schools last year where they won gold. These quads will no doubt have talent on board, but may well struggle against older opposition on race day.
Abingdon School BC
A single entry here from Abingdon and it comes under the name of Rundle. This season, he raced at Wallingford in the J18 1x and came a credible 22nd racing up a year. He seems to have come from Reading RC, a club associated with sculling at a reasonably high level and so is a good sculler to have in this crew. Over the half term, the Abingdon senior squad were in Spain on a training camp so will be looking to turn that mileage into good boat speed here, in what could be a dangerous combination.
York City RC
A two boat entry from York, they will no doubt be looking to build on the success that they had last year, where they qualified a crew for Henley who made it to the Thursday. For this event we have crews under the names of Barwick and Mills. At the recent York Autumn Sculls, a crew under the name of Barwick took a the fastest time of the day, and Mills (seemingly a J15) won his quad event. Therefore these crews from York will be strong, though the younger crew may struggle to match the standard of the top crews in the category.
Tideway Scullers School
An ever present name on the junior sculling scene, Scullers have a single crew in this category, with the top ranked crew going in the Championship event. This crew comes under the name of Humphrey-Evans. He was part of a large TSS contingent that raced at the recent Weybridge Silver Sculls where he placed 10th in J18 1x, and 3rd in J18 2x.
Predictions
This is a massive category so this is only a small snippet of the crews racing, so anyone could come from the unknown and make a name for themselves. However i think that these will be the main contenders and of these crews i think the order will be:
- St Paul’s School-Craig-McFeeley
- Abingdon School-Rundle
- York City-Barwick
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