Wolfson did exceptionally well in this year’s Summer Eights coming 2nd overall behind St. Catz with 16 bumps for and 0 against (the only college with a clean sheet!). All agreed that a well-organized club had been the key to this year’s success; hopefully laying the foundations for an equally successful 1997. Congratulations and thanks to the outgoing committee members for their hard work and dedication.

Crews

Six crews were entered and all bumped up at least one place. Women’s 1st and 2nd bumped up a division as did Men’s 1st. Both the women’s boats were unlucky not to gain blades and looked very impressive out on the river.

Men’s First Boat

This years men’s first Torpid showed the recent Wolfson trend of having a high proportion of novices in the crew, and also a new head coach in Catherine Hawkins. With a line up eventually settled, the crew developed quite quickly, with Greg Hodgins’ Zen technique and Skipper Holland’s natural bitch seat mentality spurring the crew on. Nevertheless, after the Henley Head, the crew was on paper as being 30 seconds slower than rivals and chasing crew Linacre. Some ill-chosen words from Linacre Captain Neil Selby on the news group however, managed to psych us up on Tuesday evening, and the predicted bump by Linacre on Wolfson never happened. Nor did it happen on the second day, or the third, with the inexperienced Wolfson crew taking bumps racing in their stride to chalk up three gutsy (and at times smooth) row overs. The climax of the event left us chasing a slowish Keble crew on the last day but being chased by St Annes, the fastest crew in the division. After a flying start, Wolfson closed the gap on Keble to a third of a length through the gut, but just couldn’t close the agonising last gap. Past the boat houses, there was still half a length separating the top three crews, but St Annes closed in just after. The statistics read Wolfson down one place, but that does not tell the story. This year’s men’s first Torpid performed exceptionally, being one of the smoothest Wolfson men’s first eights to represent the college. This was due in no small part to the dedicated coaching of Cath Hawkins (at risk of job) and Gerrald Goselink, but also due to the monumental effort put in buy the eight guys and one girl in the crew. Well done lads (and lass).

Richard Holland.
Captain and 7, Men’s 1st Torpid.

Women’s First Boat

Got blades! The women’s 1st 8 faced serious problems before and during Torpids. Theresa (stroke) got injured 2 weeks before, when she had to stop completely all physical exercises. After that, the red flag came up and nobody could train. So we got back together as a crew on Saturday before Torpids, by when Fiona (3) fell ill with a very bad flu. With 2 more outings only before Torpids, calm was not easy to get. Zoe substituted Fiona once, Jo another time, and the latter ended up (even though she assumedly was unfit) racing with us on Wed and Thu. When Fiona got back on Friday, it was a relief for both the 1st boat and the schools 8, with whom Jo was supposed to row since from the beginning. Yet, the rhythm was not there tout de suite, so we took the coach’s suggestion and went out for an extra outing on Saturday morning. It was a brave decision, as we were likely to bump up one division in the afternoon’s race, so needing to race twice later on. That what was happened indeed. But, instead of what anybody could guess before, we had our best races on Saturday, having our fastest bump on Christ Church 1st eight and putting the boat between the 1st and 1nd division. Blades already there, we rowed over to guarantee our position, passing by a wonderful crash involving Pembroke, Lincoln and Somerville.

Bumped: Worcester on the first day, Hertford on the second, Brasenose on the third, and Christ Church on the final day.

Men’s Second Boat

Were pretty unlucky not to get blades. They just needed that final bump on the last day which did not happen. The overall results were a total of 4 bumps up, and zero bumps down making them rise 6 places into division IV. An excellent performance. Crews bumped include St Peter’s II, Queen’s II, Wadham II, St Catz II, Worcester II and St John’s II.

Women’s Second Boat

Women’s 2nd rowed over on the first day, narrowly missing Corpus. On the second day, they bumped Pembroke and LMH II to bump into Division III. On Friday, they bumped Somerville. On the fourth day, a crash prevented them from catching Corpus. Though miffed at not getting blades, W2 is proud to have achieved the fixed divisions.

Men’s Third Boat

Bumped on every day! Bumped LMH III (after 10 strokes!) on the first day. The second day bumped Keble III. Third day was Magdalen III followed by Osler II as sandwich boat and the final day saw a bump on Regents Park just before the gut, thus taking Wolfson III into the fixed divisions – there are only 4 colleges with 3 VIIIs in the fixed divisions.

Women’s Third Boat

On the first day the women’s third eight overbumped on Christ Church, followed on the second day by bumping Lincoln. Day 3 saw a bump on Pembroke II (who were four boats ahead!) and day 4 saw a row over nearly catching Magdalen II who started 10 lengths ahead.

As a crew we had 90% the sprint speed of all other boats in the division but because of fitness had 150% the base speed in the rest of the course so although we were nearly caught off every start (esp on day 2 when we came off the start at 45 degrees and headed straight for the other bank so that Christ Church chasing had overlap on the other side of the river) we were never that worried. Special mention should be made of Kath Allen’s excellent abilities in the 2 seat. No crabs caught (a miracle). – Liz