The premier event for schoolboy sculling, this event has improved in quality year on year. Now representative of the very peak of junior quads, encompassing crews from across the world, we’re salivating at the prospect of strong UK entries, unknown quantities from across the seas and the red hot brand of expectation weighing down on holders, challengers and pretenders alike. Due to get started on Wednesday, with seeds entering the draw on Thursday, let’s take a look at the runners and riders for this Fawley Challenge Cup…
Maidenhead RC
This Maidenhead crew are without doubt one of the favourites to win the Fawley this year. This crew is one of the moat established crews in terms of personnel, with the crew pbeing the same the whole of the past two years. The crew order has been slightly reshuffled for this season, with Harrison Rowe taking the stroke seat, Eduardo Marshall moving into the bow seat, with Elliott Kemp and junior worlds medalist Victor Kleshnev in the 2 and 3 seats respectively. The effect of this has been clear for all to see, total domination from the Maidenhead crew. They are gunning for the triple, last achieved by Claire’s Court School in 2016, having already taken commanding wins in the Schools Head and Championship Quads at National Schools. If that wasn’t enough they also took a 1-2 in the Champ Doubles on the Sunday. At Marlow Regatta, they chose to race Ch4x rather than the junior category and placed 4th in the A final of this event, beating all other junior crews. However a potential worry was that Windsor Boys School were a mere 1.5 seconds shy in 5th, by far the closest anyone has got to Maidenhead this year. As a crew who will want to avenge their loss in last years Semi Final to Claire’s Court and take the Fawley, Maidenhead will have an almighty tussle on their hands, in what is their last chance.
The Windsor Boys School
The defending champions from 2017, Windsor will be looking to retain the Fawley Challenge Cup in 2018. At the National Schools Regatta, in the end of May, Windsor were nearly five seconds adrift from the winners, Maidenhead. Since then, it appears that Windsor have stepped on. At the Marlow regatta, WBS won Junior Quadruple Sculls, edging out Westminster and Leander Club. Thirty minutes after winning this final, Windsor competed in the A final of the Championship Quads, this time alongside Maidenhead, who elected to just race one category. Windsor ended up only 1.5 seconds away from Maidenhead, which demonstrates that they have definitely stepped on this summer, and is remarkable that they could close the gap from 5 seconds to 1.5 seconds, especially with the two races having close proximity to one another. Their two races differed only by 2 seconds, a remarkable achievement. They also have a Junior World silver medallist in the boat, along with the winner of championship singles at NSR, and this makes The Windsor Boys School a hot favourite to retain the Fawley.
Leander Club
The top junior crew from the Pink Palace, in what is it’s much heralded 200th year of existence. This crew has been a very settled crew throughout the season, albeit in various combinations. 3 of the 4 members have been at trials for their national teams over the course of the season, a testament to the quality of the junior section at Leander. Matt Peters is the only returner from last years beaten semi finalist crews and these boys will want to go one better than that this year. They have proved consistent form throughout the season, however missing out on a medal at National Schools’ will have stung. Since then they raced at Marlow, putting 4 seconds on the Westminster School crew who beat them to bronze at NSR. This Leander crew are still finding speed, and are on home water, but the big question is can they find enough to upset the Maidenhead applecart? Quite possibly.
Westminster School
A school renown in recent years for prioritising a top eight, have made the switch this year to quads, under guidance of coach Josh Butler, a winner of Henley last year for Sport Imperial. At the National Schools Regatta, Westminster took the Bronze medal over Leander Club, by the margin of 0.39 of a second. By the time of Marlow regatta, Leander overturned this margin, beating Westminster by four seconds. After this apparent step backwards, the boys from Westminster School will be seeking revenge, and with the end of the examination period, they will be looking to move back into full time training, and hopefully make the step required to reach finals day at Henley. It is going to be a hard task to get to the level of Windsor or Maidenhead, however, they will be looking to finish their season on a high, and with environment of Henley, anything is possible.
Sydney Rowing Club
The second pre-qualified Australian entry in this event, and they will be looking to make a mark on the regatta. This crew have been rowing together and competing as a development group at SRC since 2017 when Harry Crouch was selected in the Australian JM4x and Tom Galloway teamed with Ash Nicholls to win gold in the NSW Sprint Championship. Galloway rowed at Shore School, Crouch and Potter at Newington and Nicholls at Kings. They combined rowing at their schools with representing SRC at appropriate and opportunistic times. Following on from 2017 they attended the club s 2018 Jindabyne camp in January and represented SRC in various combinations including a quad that won the B Grade 4x at the Ed Trickett Grade Championships. Tom Galloway also won a silver medal at the same regatta representing SRC in the Men’s A Grade 4- .
Marlow Rowing Club
Marlow have had a seemingly disappointing season in comparison to the other UK crews who have prequalified here. At National Schools Regatta, they only managed a 3rd place finish in the B final, behind Lea Rowing Club and Tideway Scullers School, 26 seconds behind the Windsor Boys School. Since then, at Marlow Regatta, they closed this gap to 16 seconds, which is substantial, and for them, will hopefully get them to the Friday; however, with the competitiveness of this event, nothing is certain. Three members of the boat placed in the top 30 at February trials, so there is a lot of promise here, and with the benefit of not having to qualify, the crew should be fresh and ready to go by Wednesday the 4th.
Warrington Rowing Club
The most northerly of the pre-qualified crews, this is Warrington’s A crew, having entered two crews into the event. They had a reasonably successful National Schools Regatta, finishing sixth in the time trial, and booking their place into the A final. Their A final did not go as planned, with them seeming to have expended all their energy earlier in the day, finishing 36 seconds adrift of the winners, which would have placed them midway in the B final, a disappointing end to the regatta. We have not seen this Warrington crew since National Schools, however, this should mean they have taken the time to try to step on further. These boys will be looking to the Friday as a minimum, and with their trialist in the three seat, they should look to him to try and consolidate a big rhythm in the quiet, middle ground of the 2112m course.
Henley RC ‘A‘
Another of the top end junior quads from this season, Henley have finally managed to find the formula to compete on the junior men’s scene this year. Again, this has been settled crew throughout the year with two additions from Maidenhead in the form of Ethan O’Conner and Lewis Howlett who both raced in Maidenhead’s 2nd 4x last year who qualified for Henley so both have experience racing over the track. At National Schools’ this year, this crew finished 5th in the A final of Champ Quads, although there was a fairly sizeable gap to Leander in 4th so this crew still have work to do. At Marlow they finished 4th with a much smaller gap to those in front. Again this seems to be a crew still finding speed, and what with the regatta being on home water they will be more familiar than most with the intricate nature of the Henley Royal Regatta track. For me this crew will definitely be looking for the weekend, and from there anything can happen.
St Joseph’s Nudgee College, Australia.
One of the Australian armada that have made the long trip to Henley this year. This year, the Victoria Interstate Regatta was combined with the Sydeny international regatta.
Tideway Scullers School ‘A’
One of the stalwarts of junior rowing, Tideway Sculler will yet again have a competitive crew at Henley. The stand out name on the crew lists is Laurence Joss, who has already earned 2 GB vests this year at the Munich Regatta and the European Junior Championships in the Single. He also raced in the TSS top quad at Henley last year, where, after winning a blockbuster against Clonmel RC of Ireland, they went out to Maidenhead on the Friday. This quad have been brought together late in the season, and have done well to pre qualify given the usual standard of the event. The top TSS crew finished 5th at the recent Marlow regatta. Since then, a crew change has been made, that you have to think will make the crew faster, even at this late stage. The time at Marlow was just shy of that of Henley, so as such I think TSS will harbour similar ambitions, get to the weekend and see what happens from there. A potential dark horse?
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