Metropolitan Regatta 2022

This weekend, the club attended the Metropolitan Regatta at Dorney lake, one of the top events on the rowing calendar and an important event for Henley Royal Regatta qualification. As you would expect from an event of this pedigree the competition was tough, and as our first event after BUCSs regatta, a perfect testing ground to open the tank and test our speed in the run up to Henley Royal and Henley Women’s Regatta. The boats all performed really well, with the day’s highlight being the women’s 4- of Georgie Thorpe, Katie Kersey, Anna Kemsley and Grace Johnson who won Academic 4s, climbing up from 2^nd in the time trial. The final was incredibly close all the way down the course with just a second between themselves and Tideway Sculling School.

The highlight of the morning was the men’s 4- of Richard Adams, Tom Swithenbank, George Wright and Emil Ghattas who came 2^nd in Academic 4s and 11^th overall, which in a very competitive field, is a brilliant result.

Closely following the men’s 4- was the W4x who came 5^th overall, narrowly missing out on the medals and the fastest University W4x, a fantastic result. The women’s 8 had been struggling in the lead up to the race to practice due to availability issues but managed to come 2^nd in the E final. The men’s double had an excellent time trial, making it into the A final where they had a very good race and placed 8^th overall, 5^th University crew.

In the afternoon, our men’s 8 demonstrated some real potential, placing 7^th in the D final after the time trial and 10^th in academic 8s. Coming through the 750m to go mark the 8+ was 2^nd before the field caught up and eventually placed 7^th in what was an incredibly close race with 5 crews staying level all the way down the course and showing some good mid race speed. James Lawn was racing in LwtM1x where he narrowly missed out on the B final by a couple of seconds due to a rouge buoy but came back fighting, grabbing the 3^rd place in the C final, an excellent result while surrounded by some of the toughest competition of the day. And to finish off the racing our M4x managed to come home with a 3^rd place overall and the 2^nd University crew.

Yesterday was an excellent show of strength from the club with all crews showing that they mean serious business as we rapidly approach the end of the season at HRR and HWR. Over the next 2 weeks, our squads will be preparing for HWR and Marlow regatta where we hope to learn from this weekend and come back with even more speed.

I would like to thank everyone for their help and support of the boat club, without it we simply would not be able to achieve all that we do! I would like to give a special thank you to the coaches, Pete and Dan, along with Nicola Boyes and Laura Pope for helping organise transport. Finally, a special mention has to go to Anna Kemsley’s Dad, who at the last minute after hearing about our trailer problems drove up from Reading to tow the boats down and back to Nottingham. Without his assistance, this day and all its success would not have been possible.

We are looking forward to the remainder of the season as group 2 prepare for Bedford Regatta next weekend and the senior squads are looking forward to improving on this weekend at Marlow and HWR in 2 week time!