Marlow Town Regatta

A highlight of the racing calendar for GMSBC is always competing at our home regatta. It is particularly exciting for the younger rowers and for our Year 8 crews, this was their first regatta. (Two others were cancelled due to bad weather.)  In the Year 8 Quads, all the crews managed to beat other crews, but in every race, unfortunately, there was another (slightly more experienced) crew that managed to beat them.

However, in the Octos, our boys looked very impressive and took revenge over Maidenhead Rowing Club, who beat them in the Quads, to win their first medals at their very first regatta. A great result for a great group of students.

The river was very choppy during the regatta, which made racing for the less experienced crews fairly challenging. In fact, a number of our crews fell foul on shipwrecks and in some instances poor steering by other crews.

Our J16 Boys’ Four had a comfortable win in the heats over Radley; they had a slightly tougher final against Winchester as they were started down by a poor alignment judge. The boys still ‘overhauled them’ to pick up another medal.

Joe Cogan and Owain Meredith had a great result in the J18 Double Sculls and coped with the tricky conditions excellently to win their event.

We had two older crews in the Open Fours, with our Alumni competing in the Coxed Fours winning by some 3 lengths, although they were looking pretty tired by the end.

We had two coaches and two Year 11s in the Coxless Fours. Dave Read at Stroke, Ethan and Sam from our J16s and Lewis Sloan steering at bow. The Monkton crew held on well at the start and by 250m were still very much in touch, but as our scratch crew started to find a rhythm at a more settled rate the GMS crew opened up some clear water and the margin continued to grow throughout the race, bringing them the win.

The major event of the regatta in the middle of the afternoon is the Marlow Schools’ Challenge. This is an event between GMS and Borlase in Eights for both boys and girls. The regatta enclosure, full of partisan supporters tends to get very noisy at the time of this race. For the last couple of years, GMS has won both these races reasonably comfortably but Borlase was definitely out to challenge this. The first was the Girls’ Eight race and as the crews came into sight it looked as though Borlase had a slight lead, however, a very strong finish from the GMSBC girls saw them pull ahead and the official verdict was a win to GMS by a canvass (about 6 feet).

In the Boys’ Eight event The GMSBC crew led from the start but the Borlase boys held on well and in the sprint for the line, (with the inside station looking to be closing a little) but it was not enough so the Boys’ Eight won. This is the third year running GMSBC has won both races.

A fun day in the sun and some great wins, particularly the Boys Octo.