Firstly, I would like to congratulate all the crews that raced on Saturday! With the event a month earlier than last season, some crews may have not had enough time to prepare probably for the event whereas others seem to have thrived off this and maybe this is just the start for some of these crews! This is only a brief review but I shall endeavour to include as much as possible!
As a collective of writers; I am happy with us predicting 3 of the winners from the junior events this year and successfully identifying pretty much all the top players, so thanks to everyone for their input.
Junior Fours
For the second year running the Pennant has gone to St Paul’s School, which I am sure isn’t a huge surprise to many people. This crew has national medallist and also they sent a crew over to race The Head of the Charles placing 3rd! Despite a whopping 19 second gap between the top two crews, Tideway Scullers followed them up as predicted by ‘Five Man’ (I like a good gut feeling predication). I hope this Tideway Scullers crew can close this gap and make the rest of the season an exciting year of racing.
Junior Women’s Fours
The top three crews were predicted, but not in the order that they finished in. The Sir William Borlase girls took the winning place rather comfortably ahead of Henley and then the LEH crew. These three crews do stand out from the group with well over a minute between first and fourth place. It was a small field with only 13 crews but they still shone out as the ones to watch. This will set them up nicely for the proceeding season.
Junior Women’s Quads
The W.J16.4x crew from Henley have been prolific throughout last season winning National Schools and Henley Women’s Regatta and even representing GB! And they have started this season in style by continuing their dominant streak, maybe by a smaller margin then they might have wanted but you know what they say; start as you mean to go on!
My favourite type of crew are the crews that come out of nowhere do well, just like Royal Shrewsbury School have for this event, they didn’t race Henley or National Schools, but popped up to finish 5th (less than 2 seconds behind the crew ahead!). I hope they continue to surprise us all and keep moving up in the results!
Junior Quads
If we take a trip down memory lane to last year’s review of the very same event we will find “A superb performance from the accomplished unit from SWB, who provided a devastating response to the questions I asked of them in the preview.” Now that we are a year on they have extended that across the entire season and now into this season. They go from strength to strength and needless to say they will probably continue to win all season. This being said they really weren’t that far ahead of Leander who pushed for the top spot, we might be seeing the start of a new rivalry here!
I will extend my congratulations to the Maidenhead crew for a blisteringly fast race putting them in 5th place, but I shall just say this did take me by surprise as a Maidenhead crew didn’t get through Henley qualifying or have any incredible showing throughout the season! So sorry for not being in my preview, but your name is out there now as a player for the season.
Well, new crews have emerged from amongst the multitude of rowers who will be around this year, some have remained at the top but this season is already setting out to be exciting which should mean by the time the summer regattas arrive the racing will be incredible! If you have any questions or specific queries about the event or just junior rowing in general drop me a comment and I will get back to you!
Dora.
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