JRN are delighted to announce that Thames Rowing Club’s Men’s Eight are our Club Crew of the Year.
The Thames Challenge Cup has become something of an obsession for this Putney-based institution and their club towards the summit this year was littered with potential hazards. They overcame them all to lift the ultimate trophy in men’s club rowing alongside a litter of strong performances at Fours Head, HORR plus Wallingford, Metropolitan and Marlow Regattas. Approaching Henley Royal Regatta, they narrowly emerged as top contenders, scraping past a crew from Sydney amongst other strong domestic competition. Come Henley week, this always looked a class apart and sealed their victory by over four lengths against de Hoop of the Netherlands.
Men’s Coach, Jamie Brown, commented: “This was a really special campaign for Thames. As a club we have a big history in the Thames Challenge Cup, and four guys from this eight were in the crew that lost the final in 2022 so it felt like a real homecoming. I spoke to all of the returners from the 2022 eight during the summer and one of them told me that they didn’t just want to win in 2023 – they wanted to dominate – so that was the energy that was behind this campaign from day one. A real highlight for me was the race against Sydney on the Saturday of Henley. It was clearly going to be our toughest race – Sydney had got a lot of attention and seemed to be the favourites. Despite what people were saying, we were confident that if we deployed all of the weapons that we had been developing then the result would take care of itself, so we spent a lot of time mentally preparing for that and focusing on ourselves. We were clear that we had the power to win or lose the race and that we weren’t going to let it be dictated by another crew. It was a case of peaking at just the right moment, and we won by 1 ¾ lengths having only beaten them at Marlow by one second. This project was also a great example of what club rowing should be about – going fast and having fun while having a full-time job, and this eight really pushed the boundaries of that.“
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