Metropolitan and Peterborough Regatta
Saturday saw the club split across the country, with the intermediate men heading to Peterborough for their summer regatta, and the senior men joined by the womens squad traveled down to the Olympic lake at Eton, Dorney, for Metropolitan Regatta. At Peterborough, the boys raced in quads and doubles, across band 1 and 2. Over the shortened distance compared to BUCS regatta and Nottingham City, the quads picked up a 2nd and 3rd place finish in their finals, moving into the doubles for heats later and coming up with two 3rd place finishes. This was a good set of races against a range of club crews attending the event.
Down at Dorney, it was just the mens pair carrying on from last weekend representing the club there, with a fast start they went out hard to try and push the rest of the field. Unfortunately they couldn’t shake all of them and didn’t quite hold onto the front in the last stages of the race.
On Sunday a larger contingent headed to Dorney for the second day of racing, the good conditions saw strong set of results across the squads. Notable performances included the novice women gaining experience at a high level regatta before they move onto the next event, and the mens pair having a good fight with the opposition for second place, coming out on top in the last few hundred metres. The women’s lightweight double raced in the Championship doubles event and raced very well in their heat pipping Oxford Brookes on the line to qualify for the final.
Highlight for the day was the mens eight racing in the Challenge Eights event, after a time trials over 60 crews are split into close semi finals, progressing to further finals for tight racing at the end of the day, a great watch for the spectators. Using the event as a stepping stone to the rest of the regatta season, the crew put together a tidy set of races, competing against strong crews from Ireland, London, and Durham. They finished up with a good race in the B final, making the top 14 from the original 62 and coming out as the fastest non high performance funded university on the day.