Medals and More-Sunday

Rowing is an outdoor sport, so weather as we know only too well has played its hand. With a strong cross wind all day the lanes became all important and the Boys’ 6th place in the TT meant they were two lanes across from the best lane. In order to have a chance of a medal in the final, they needed to beat Hinksey in the lane inside them in the semis.
With this in mind, they took the race on from the go and had a flying start. At 500m they were 1 second down on the leader Marlow and 2 seconds ahead of Hinksey. This order was maintained through the 1000m mark, but the adverse lane conditions started to tell and with 750 to go Hinksey had taken the lead and there was no coming back.
This put GMS in the 4th lane over, for the final and, in these conditions, made achieving a medal unrealistic.

The Girls’ Quad, sadly, had a poor start for their semi leaving them too much to do to catch their main rivals for lanes in the final.

In the finals, a strong crosswind remained, but it had swung around a little to be slightly on the tail, making it not quite so penalising. The inside lanes still had an advantage but probably only around ½ a length per plane. Given the lane draws, the GMS Boys’ target was to race Leander and move up from 5th to 4th.

They were possibly a little more relaxed than usual given the realistic chance of a medal was gone. Yet, their start was fast and at 500m they were in third place, but Hinksey two lanes over slipped past in the next 500m.

At halfway, despite being in the worse lane, GMS was leading Leander by 0.4 seconds. Leander pushed hard but the boys held and at 1500m the difference was down to 0.3 seconds. While it was close, Mr Murison on the bank was feeling confident. No one was coming past this GMS Quad that late in the race. Both crews pushed hard for the line, but Leander could not make further progress and GMS took 4th place 0.2 seconds ahead of Leander.

The last race of the Regatta for GMS was the Girls’ Championship 4x B final with our girls four lanes over from the inside track. They had a good start and were performing in line with the rankings over the first 500, although Peterborough next to them had flown in the early part of the race. By halfway, GMS had overhauled Peterborough’s early lead and were chasing after Tideway scullers on their inside. They had a strong second half and having been over a length behind Tideway Scullers at 1000m, and despite the lane disadvantage, they closed this down to a half-length by the finish line.
A fabulous finish to a great weekend’s racing.