On Saturday 7th October, Worcester Rowing Club hosted their annual October head on a 4.5k downstream course featuring many large bends. This course is often the first head of the season for many local clubs and is renowned for being incredibly cold and foggy for both divisions. However this year the rowers were blessed with sunshine all day which meant that many rowers ended carrying the weight of many unneeded layers. Despite the pleasant weather, the river was very high, fast and swirling due to downpours in Wales over the last few days which, although it produced very fast times, also removed certain aspects of control over the steering making it especially difficult for the less experienced and coxless crews.
While the race wasn’t a ‘big’ race, events hosted by Worcester are often popular with local clubs due to the long stretch of the River Severn available to race down. For clubs, to get wins early in the season is reassuring for bigger races to come. This head had 156 entries from 20 clubs with Worcester Rowing Club and King’s School Worcester making up almost half the boats. As a result these 2 clubs also made up 16 of the 43 wins of the day although almost all the clubs who were present took home at least 1 win. The fastest crew of the day was a J18A.4x- from Hereford Cathedral school with at time of 12:46.79 over 4.5k. The fastest women’s crew was the crew from Worcester RC in W.J18A.4x- with a time of 13:54.07. This doesn’t surprise me as they have consistently produced fast results over the last year and seem to have increased in power over the summer.
SweepOrScull
Featured photo taken by Andrew Emsley
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