The women’s single scull category at Wallingford Long Distance Sculls features 19 boats heavily made up of rowers from Headington School Boat Club. It seems that this race is being used as a way to compare members of the squad relatively early in the season under pressure and therefore leaves a high chance of some unexpected results. As is often the case in events early on in the season with a wide range of entries from each club, there is a lack of recent results to predict who the top contenders will be. This event is missing many of the people who regularly dominate the top placings at National Events in the single and instead features lots of primarily sweep rowers so it will be interesting to see the results of this category which is composed of many rowers who have recently either represented the country or placed highly in national events in other boats.
Henley-Hahn Hahn competed in both the Champ 8+ and Championship Quads at National Schools’ Regatta in May with high success. The win in the eight was particularly memorable due to the fact that this Henley crew broke the 8-year winning streak which Headington eights had held up until this point, proving their strength and ability as a crew. With both of these crews being sweep boats, it will be fascinating to see how her power translates into the single.
Headington- Van Onselen Van Onselen competed in the Headington A eight at National Schools Regatta 2018, finishing 2nd to the Henley eight, as well as placing 6th in the Championship quads. Van Onselen represented Great Britain at the Coupe De La Jeunesse over the summer, in the Czech Republic, in both the JW4- and JW8+. She won gold in both these events which places her in a very promising position coming into this race although again, she appears slightly more experienced and successful in the sweep boats.
Hed- Grainger At National Schools Regatta, Grainger raced in the Headington B crew eight, placing 1st in the B final. With the most recent results of the competitors in this category, with a 1st place in the WJ18 1x category at Isis Sculls earlier in September this puts her in a very strong position going into this event, especially in comparison to the other Headington rowers who were also competing in that race, along with those who competed at this event in the WJ17 1x category.
Hed- Mahony Mahony raced in the Headington 1st eight at NSR, which finished 2nd, and also made the B final in the four, finishing 3rd. While her Squad mate Grainger placed 1st in the age category above, Mahony placed 1st in the WJ17 singles at Isis Sculls a fortnight ago with a very convincing victory over the other singles, therefore putting her in a very promising position coming into this race.
Hen- Fletcher Along with Hahn, Fletcher won gold at National Schools Regatta in the Championship eights as stroke of the boat and also achieved the bronze medal position in the Championship fours, once again proving competency in the sweep boats. In general, it will be interesting to see how all the stronger sweep rowers will do in the single – something I think would be heavily affected by river conditions and the steering of the course on Saturday.
ROSS- Banks-Martin Banks-Martin has proved successful as a J15/J16 which can be proven with the gaining of a pennant for fastest women’s single scull at Monmouth in 2017 however since this, she doesn’t seem to have had many recent results. This could mean that she will be very strong when she gets into the single, due to past experience, but also leaves a hint of uncertainty as to how her single will have fared over the last year as a lesser raced boat.
Headington also have entries from: Marks, Klico, Barker, Milne, Gothard and Waldron.
Other entries in this category include: Pollard from Henley, Little from the Royal Grammar School Worcester, Tomasik from Maidenhead, Cross from Evesham, Weighill from Emanuel School and Kemp and Rattigan from Cheltenham College.
My predictions for this race are that HED- Grainger, HED- Van Onselen and HEN- Hahn will take the top positions although with so many boats of similar experience/inexperience in the single, it leaves a high probability of a surprise outcome from the competitors.
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