The Wallingford Long Distance Sculls is an annual head race held on the same stretch of the Thames as used by Oxford, and Oxford Brookes University Boat Clubs. The race comprises a shorter course of 2.5km and a longer course of 4km, both on a part of the river that is infamous for its winding twists and turns. The nine crews entered in the J18 4x- are of seemingly matched calibre, which makes it highly likely that the foot-steering in these coxless quads may be the differentiating factor.
Lea Rowing Club
Lea Rowing Club have put forward just one crew, a new combination of seasoned rowers who carry decent laurels. Their boat is topped and tailed by Sebastian Burbidge and Daniel Delport who raced at the National School’s Regatta ’23 in the Ch4x, finishing respectably in the B final. Elliot Marsden and Toby Swan, the remaining two crew members, achieved the same result in the Ch2x and the J16 4x respectively. Apart from the mix of abilities and age groups in this crew, what’s interesting is that 3/4 of the aforementioned crew members posted times at NSR that could’ve placed them strongly in the A final, showing the strength of this nascent crew. Lea also placed well at the Junior Sculling Head (3rd) and the Junior Sculling Regatta (10th), showing the experience of the squad in these small sculling boats.
Pangbourne College Boat Club
It looks like this Pangbourne College crew are continuing a long-standing rivalry with the above Lea crew. Pangbourne beat Lea by just over three seconds at NSR last year, a result that could have easily been influenced by the extremely adverse conditions we all remember fondly (although, when you look at the lanes, the crosswind was favouring Lea). The 3/4 returning crew members are back to try and repeat the same results They start immediately before the Pangbourne crew and surely hope to keep facing their backs this entire race. They are joined by newcomer, Noah Lowe, who has been promoted from the 2nd quad to the top quad it seems this year.
Royal Grammar School High Wycombe Boat Club
RGS High Wycombe BC are new to this particular event though they amassed plenty of experience in the quad last year. The club attended both JSR and JSH where they finished 16th and 12threspectively, along with mixed results at NSR. As seems to be the theme, and as one would probably expect this early on in the season, the crew racing on Saturday is a scratch boat with all members having achieved different levels of success last year. Two of four members, sat in RGSHW BC’s top crew-boat last year but ended up in the C final at NSR. They will be rowing with J17 Jonty Stewers who may save the day, placing in the B final at NSR. We seem to have another promotion, Fraser Heppel has made his way from stroking the B quad to sitting at the 2 seat in the top boat, only time can tell us what he has on offer.
Predictions
These are but three of the nine boats entered in this category, but the theme of minor finals at major regattas continues into the rest of the draw. It seems the more heavy-hitting crews have boldly put themselves in the Op4x- category. Those being namely three sets of St. Paul’s School Boat Club crews and one from Magdalen College School Boat Club. Looking at that category from a purely probabilistic lens, SPS have the upper hand with 3:1 odds all things equal, but in the rowing world all things are not equal. Using what we know about the SPS programme it’s pretty safe to say at least one of the SPS crews will come home with gold.
Turning swiftly back to the J18 4x-, both the crews from Lea and Pangbourne look to be evenly matched and it’s difficult to determine which of the two will take the win here. On paper, Pangbourne were slightly faster than Lea in 2023, but those were completely different crew members so who knows what this year will bring!
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