First boat
On really rather pleasant day, Wolfson W1 had a pleasant row to the marshalling area, a lively marshalling with inspirational recitations from ‘The Boys in the Boat’ and other less inspirational works and jelly babies. Our marshalling entertainment was so enticing other crews stopped to listen in. However, in the chaos of spinning and starting the race, Wolfson got separated from any nearby opposition and spent the entire race all alone, pushing hard from an early wind-up before Hammersmith Bridge, through to the (bloody) finish, where poor Annie was bleeding all over her handle. It was only after they landed that they learned that the rudder strings had snapped when they got in the boat that morning! Wolfson put in a strong result, finishing 8th of 22 in the WIM3 Category and 147 overall, followed very closely by the second boat.
Second boat
As we lined up for the start, the marshalling was a mess and we had to work hard to get ourselves into position. Slowly but surely we figured out where we were meant to be and waited for our start time. We were waiting for a while to start, but then we had a fairly long warm-up run for the start to find our rhythm again. As we pushed off the start, we focussed on everything that we had been training for at Dorney the weekend before – compared to Dorney, this would be a walk in the park. We quickly started gaining on a few of the crews in of us and front they didn’t stand a chance – a few strong strokes and we were past them and back in our racing line. Before we knew it, half the race had gone already.
The weather was on our side and we kept our rhythm as we pushed on towards Barnes Bridge, passing a few more crews for good measure. We were now on the final corner and had to keep each stroke hard, maximising the power in the water and making every stroke count. A minute later Chiswick Bridge and the finish came into sight – this was it and we had to push on hard for the finish to secure our time. In the end, we finished less than three seconds behind W1, finishing next to each other out of over 200 crews. A stunning performance throughout.
Final results can be found here.