The second round of water assessments in Boston saw a small field of lightweight scullers looking to make an impression. The results from this trial go a long way to athletes securing an invitation to final trials later on this season. Given that there will only be two seats in a lightweight event come the racing season, it will be interesting to see how the results of these trials impact the direction that selection will take.
Seniors
The top two places in this trial were taken by Jamie Copus, who pipped Dale Flockhart by just over a second over the long Boston course. These two guys were a long way clear of third place, which will doubtless put them in a good position going forward in terms of a possible selection. The profile of their time trials was almost identical which bodes well if these two guys were to combine forces in the double for the summer season.
The other two athletes racing as seniors, Daniel Jones and Ben Parsonage finished 30 seconds and 1 minute back on the pace of the leading duo respectively. This is a large gap, however the Boston course can throw up challenges, and it would be interesting to see how this develops when racing moves to a shorter distance in the coming months.
U23s
In terms of the U23 contenders, this was a battle between Oxford and Cambridge and was comprehensively won by Matthew Edge from Cambridge, with a margin of 27 seconds separating him from Nick Ryan from Oxford’s Lightweights. Matthew’s time was good enough for fourth overall making this the second time he has topped the U23 rankings this season, with the same ranking in November. Given that both clubs are targeting the same event, it is interesting to compare these two times, given these guys will likely have been doing similar training, meaning this was a battle of sculling capacity. The other two entries in the U23 element of the trial were Matthew Cleugh and Finn Regan. Both did not start so it is impossible to know where they fitted into this result, but in November both Matthew and Nick got the better of the Durham athlete and Finn was not entered. Given the positive season that Durham are having, it would be interesting to see how he would fit into this ranking.
Summary
To summarise, this set of trials proved that on the senior side, there are two athletes who are a considerable margin ahead of the rest of the field. Provided they continue on this trend, one would think Jamie and Dale are in a good position to race as a combination in the summer months. However, there is still time for other athletes to stake a claim.
In terms of the U23 side, it is much more of an unknown as to what direction this selection will follow in the summer months. If this will lead to a selection for U23 World Championships remains to be seen, as it has been a while since there has been a lightweight combination at the U23 worlds.
Next stop for those who are invited is 2km racing at Caversham in April.
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