The Men's IM3.2x
With the irritating distraction of the May Bumps finished and pushed out of the way, the club’s rowers settled down to the more serious business of racing at summer regattas in the small boats – St Neots Regatta represented their first opportunity to test their mettle.
The LM2x, serial winners and undefeated since Aug 2010, were back in Paul Syred and keen for some quality racing in the IM3.2x. Likewise, AJ was excited about picking up a set of sculls again after his heroics in the Peter Brandt Sculls earlier this year.
AJ took part in the 1000m on the Saturday, sadly losing in his first round to a strong competitor from an actual rowing club (as opposed to a college), but by his own admission he didn’t give the best account of himself. Back on the Sunday for the 500m sprint race, he was eager to really show what he was capable of. The first round saw him pitted against a sculler from our boathouse neighbours, Wolfson. The old man in the other lane got off to a strong start, but what followed was undoubtedly the race of the day. Flying down the course the two novice scullers were literally bow-ball to bow-ball, the crowd were on it’s feet roaring approval and the commentator got a little over-excited. The thrilling race ended with a margin of victory to Wolfson by <1 foot. A superb race.
The Smith and Matthews double had originally intended to put in some intense training sessions for their race season, but then they realised that this would give them an unfair advantage – so they continued to cox and coach as many town crews as possible in the run up to Town Bumps instead. Smith announced the week before the race that he only had time to do 1 day of the regatta, muttering something about having to write a PhD thesis, so they entered the 500m sprint only. Then 4 days before the race Smith decided to callously abandon his partner and forced Matthews to go looking for someone else. Leake stepped up to the mark, so with two short outings under their belts and to the surprise of many on the bank, a Corpus mixed double powered to the start line to take their place against their opponents from Milton Keynes in the Men’s IM3.2x event. Unfortunately what followed wasn’t particularly pleasant to watch as the teenagers from the land of roundabouts opened up a lead of 4 lengths by the finish. However, the moral victory was clearly with the Corpuscles. Somehow.