Results and reports by Event

This was our first opportunity this year to test ourselves against crews from outside Cambridge, which would be useful in judging if we had a shot of qualifying for Henley. With an early start we drove to Dorney lake, home of the 2012 olympics and Riccardo's birthplace. Uncharacteristically we arrived with ample time to rig, so no mad rush to get the boat ready.

We were sent off between Cardiff and DMU for the time trial, with a decent tailwind down the course. The start was fairly punchy, but for the first half of the race we treated it a bit too much like a head race. We powered through the choppy water around the middle of the course, making gains on Cardiff and moving away from DMU. Using the other crews we found a nice aggressive rhythm in the second half, and with a big push in the last few 100m, we finished in a time of 5:47.5.

We were fairly happy with the performance in the TT, but were still a little surprised when we found out we managed to come second, 3s off UCL who were the fastest crew. Confident we could make a big change to the first half of the race we were optimistic about the final.

We went into the final with a much more race-y attitude. The start was sharp and we wound up to a decent rate. In the first 500m we pulled out a few seats on UCL, but IC were holding onto us, over the next 500 IC fell back and going through the 1k mark I think we were still up a few seats on UCL. We faded a bit in the 3rd 500 and IC and UCL pushed past us a few seats. Determined to beat the London colleges, we had a few huge pushes in the last 500, enough to get past IC, but not enough to beat UCL.

A great race, good to see we're competitive with other crews aiming to qualify with the Temple. We had two subs in the boat who both stepped up really well, but with a week with our full crew I'm confident we have the speed to qualify. Bring on Friday!

Uploaded Tuesday 21st June, 13:05