British Rowing Championships 2013

Twelve athletes and one cox ventured to a wind-swept Nottingham for the newly established British Senior Rowing Championships. Following a pretty sensible format of Time Trial, semi’s, then final’s, the idea is to ensure people race crews of a similar standard once the rankings from the Time Trials are established. This resulted in 6 essentially flat out races over two days, on Saturday in 4-‘s, then A and B 4’s went into an 8 for the Sunday.

With little time to prepare (same for everyone really!) we came away with 2 fours in the C final on Saturday and one in the D Final, the real highlight of the day being the A four racing the stern 4 of Leander’s B 8 (all GB U23’s this summer) to within ¾ of a length in the semi.

On the Sunday, the 8 finished 14th in the Time Trial having rather under cooked it, then had a great row in the semi where it won by open water. The final was marred slightly by the rudder breaking on the way to the start which resulted in us return to the landing stages, being helped out by Oxford Brookes in getting it repaired, before heading back up. The crew had a great race with Upper Thames; we led through the first five hundred, they dominated the middle k and though we came back strongly we couldn’t quite get past, giving us a ranking of 14th overall. All told, a good weekend’s racing, with plenty of areas to work on. The A and B finals were dominated by the usual suspects from Leander, Molesey, Brookes, UL, Newcastle etc. Good bench marks for us to chase later in the season.

The crews were

‘A’ 4-

Str. Rich Dyer 3. Will Robbins 2. Brad Jowitt Bow. Nick Pusinelli

‘B’ 4-

Str. Ant Lester 3. Nick Turnbull 2. Charles Herber Bow. Jon Bale

‘C’ 4-

Str. Will Hardy 3. James Padmore 2. Chris Morahan Bow. Pat Lindon

Praneet Shivaprasad coxed the 8+ (A and B 4’s put together).