HENLEY
This season the Brookes eights swept the board at the British Universities championship, set a new club best time while winning in Ghent, and were runners-up behind Poland’s national eight at Duisburg. The Thames Challenge Cup for club eights is one of the most historic races, and the source of immense club pride to the winners. The reshuffling which saw new coaches at three of the biggest clubs, London, Molesey and Thames, gives the chance for some new achievements, and when Sport Imperial and Australians Mercantile add their clearly fast crews to the mix, the competition will certainly be interesting this year. Above them the misnamed Ladies’ Plate for sub-international men’s eights has permitted an entry from
Oklahoma City, which is the unfunded, unsupported US group likely to go to the World Championships as a lightweight eight, and which is doubling up in the Visitors’ as well to increase their racing experience. There is also a ‘mates eight’ entry from Oxford Brookes and Taurus including some previous winners, but largely made up of Americans. The big guns in the Ladies,’ apart
from a Leander and Molesey composite, are the Cal Berkeley junior varsity eight and Brown’s varsity. Harvard are for once mostly absent, after coaching changes, though they are bringing a fast coxless four to the Visitors’, which will be up against crews from Nereus Holland, Oxford Brookes, and Leander, amongst others. And they have an entry in the Prince Albert student coxed fours, which Imperial College will be hoping to defend. This event, and the Britannia club coxed fours, may like the Wyfold club coxless fours be improved by an important rule change this year, which prevents students who have competed for their university or college at a high level from taking part in club events. Local club Leander, perfectly situated
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8 ROW360 // Issue 001
just beyond the regatta finish, would be disappointed if it did not win at least one trophy with its club crews each year. This time the Pink Palace’s strength is in its Visitors and Prince of Wales crews (the intermediate events for coxless fours and quads), while their juniors have a potentially fast entry in the Fawley quad sculls. The club is defending champions in the Prince of Wales, which it has won four times in a row, and have already been triumphant at the Metropolitan regatta this season, but this is always a fiercely contested event. In the junior quads, the Fawley Challenge Cup, holders Marlow will have to get past national schools winners and runners-up Westminster and Sir William Borlase’s, as well as Met winners Star and Arrow. But it is Northwich, bronze medallists at National Schools and champions at Marlow most recently, who could cause the biggest trouble to the challengers. The event also contains an entry from LVS Ascot, technically the Licensed Victuallers’ School, although the abbreviation LVS is considered to look more dignified.
Meanwhile the girls’ quads, newly
renamed the Diamond Jubilee Challenge Cup, sees holders Latymer Upper School entered, along with the silver and gold medallists from the British (Marlow and Headington) and Canadian (Shawnigan Lake and Ridley College) school championships. This event has been by far the tightest on semi-finals and finals days in the last two years, and deserves to be moved to a high-profile place in the racing schedule, so impressive is the quality of these girls’ crews, only eight of whom will qualify to race in the main contest. By the time the competition begins in full on July 2, the slowest crews will have been weeded out by brutal qualifying races, a processional time- trial on the Friday beforehand. But that is only the first stage. Next comes the draw, at which a little bit of luck is needed to avoid meeting your biggest rivals in the first round of the knock-out system, and at which the stations are decided. The Stewards famously publish the ratios of wins on Berkshire (the towpath side) and Buckinghamshire, but pundits note that there are often more Berkshire wins when races are close and held in strong head-wind or stream conditions. Mano a mano, head to head, it’s all about the claustrophobia of racing just one opponent crew, locked in between wooden booms for a mile and 550 yards (also known as 2112 metres). From picturesque Temple Island at the start, where you may be aligned by Sir Steve Redgrave on duty as a Steward, to the crowded finish, loomed over by the Henley church tower and boasting the atmosphere of an amphitheatre, Henley is absolutely unique, and an event everyone should try to compete in one day. Like the Boat Race, there is no second place, no repechage. The losers simply pack up their boats and head for the bar. To win at Henley is something special. Win a Henley Royal medal, and you will remember it for the rest of your life. ROW360
Rachel Quarrell is the Daily and
Sunday Telegraph rowing correspondent and winner of the Britannia Challenge Cup, 1996.
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