On Friday 13th March the 80th Schools’ Head of the River Race (SHORR) took place.
This is the major national event of the winter season in the Junior Rowing Programme. Great Marlow entered two squads of Eights. A Mixed Eight and a J16 (Year 11 Boys) Eight.
Following the outstanding success of Great Britain’s mixed teams in the Winter Olympics, this seemed a good year to enter a relatively new event at SHORR, Mixed Eights. This was obviously a common theme as the entry was significantly larger and more competitive this year.
Apart from the recent Olympic success, there is also a growing debate about reforming/changing competition in Junior Rowing. Scholarships recruiting star rowers to the large independent schools being a major one, but suitable competitions for co-educational schools also being a hot topic. Clearly the Mixed Eight category is one answer.
With this in mind, the remaining four rowers from last year’s winners of J18 1st Eight combined with our top four girls to create our entry. Training over half-term at Dorney had been very encouraging with the crew performing well alongside our Year 11 Eight in side-by-side racing.
For Friday’s race we set off third in our event behind last year’s winners, Canford School and then Pangbourne College, whose new Director of Rowing is one of the principal advocates in the debate around co-ed rowing. Despite high hopes, the crew were warned not to expect to catch these crews easily as the standard looked high.
I was clearly underestimating their hunger. With the help of some excellent aggressive coxing from Chloe Sheppard, our crew slipped past Pangbourne at Barnes Bridge, barely a quarter of the race gone. Canford were soon to follow and having overtaken the main competition the crew were in high spirits and settled into a powerful rhythm that saw them pull away from the following crews. Their winning time was a record for the event and beat last year’s time by over 30 seconds.
Our J16 Boys’ Eight has experienced had a slightly mixed season leading into this race with poor results at Wallingford and Avon, although their results at the time trial at the Junior Inter-Regional Trials the previous Friday were good. Having said this, Reading Blue Coats’ crew (who are in a different Thames Up River division) had beaten them by 7 seconds over the 1500m race at Dorney and looked to be one of the crews that were their main competition. GMS knew they had their work cut out to do well over the full championship boat race course of 4 ¼ Miles.
They set off at an aggressive pace: excellent coxing from Theo Harper saw them closing on the crews ahead in the early stages.
The Tideway is a challenging stretch of water, which snakes from Chiswick Bridge down to Putney, so finding the best line is not easy as the very fast stream is about 15 metres wide somewhere in a river that is at times over 100 metres wide. The wind, while following for the most part, made conditions choppy. However, their early gains encouraged the crew and they held a relentless pace throughout. Not only did they turn their result against Bluecoats around by over thirty seconds, but won the event outright, GMSBC’s first time at J16 level.
While we have won at SHORR on a number of occasions, Friday’s double is a first time for winning two Pennants and definitely the start of what looks to be a memorable season.
Congratuations to the winning crews:
Mixed Eight: Cox-Chloe S, Kayla S, Elise W, Valere I-D, Euan S, Connor Q, Archie G, Ivy T and Georgina G.
Year 11 Boys’ Eight: Cox-Theo Harper, Austin B, Luke Q, Dima P, Ethan T, Ralph H, Alfie C, Jamie Watson and Raphael T
