Undaunted by 2 defeats at St. Neots, the foolhardy 7 seat of M2 set his sights on another river regatta. When looking for a course of only 650m on their local River Stour, the good folks of Sudbury rowing club found themselves unable to find a straight- and so the course of their “Sudbury International Regatta” (they’d managed to find some Spaniards) had a huge bow side bend. Having learnt some lessons about bow side bends a fortnight before, AJ confidently turned up well in time for his 9 O’clock start.
Unfortunately no one had thought to show up with a boat, so the friendly marshals agreed to delay the first round race of the Novice single sculls to the second division. This gave AJ time to size up his opponent.
If you look back to the 1990 boat race, you see a number of things. It was a year in which it was considered that Cambridge could not win. This was with good reason- it was the year that Matthew Pinsent gained his Blue, and the crew also contained such legends as Jonny Searle, the brother of Greg Searle who still rows as the old man of the GB VIII. It was also the year in which one Chris Heathcote broke the record for the heaviest crew member in either boat. He weighed in at 17st 5lbs, and on the morning of 6th of August 2011 he did not have any sculling points and was therefore a novice. This was the man that AJ, practically a lightweight and member of the second boat in a not particularly boaty college, had to scull against.
When eventually the kind gentlemen of Emmanuel and Queens’ colleges who had agreed to lend a scull showed up, there was just enough time to do a quick warm up and go down to the start line; AJ was eager to have a go at a man who had to optimistically be described as a has been- although his size did rather put a damper on this optimism (one girl on seeing him exclaimed about his muscles that he “has big things, on big things”- think Chris Meurice in 20 years time).
The starter called go and in a change of form from his last 3 singles races AJ pulled 2 clean half strokes before lengthening out and settling into a strong racing rhythm, the dark Blue on the Surrey station, out of sight due to the staggered start, pulled out stronger but very much still present in the peripheries of AJ’s vision as he made quick glances for the purposes of steering.
As the 2 scullers approached the corner the old rower, used to having a cox do the steering, strayed into Essex station and AJ put in a push, knowing that a ‘bump’ would cause his opponent to be disqualified. This was not to be, but AJ made up for it by navigating the corner beautifully and keeping up his strong pace. The old Oxonian finished 4 lengths ahead and, tired from his exertions, AJ hit one of the lane marker bouys with a blade one stroke before the finish and wobbled a bit. Overall a huge improvement on previous races based on boat feel and there is absolutely no shame in losing to a man who won the boat race a year before one was born. Watching the other races, it would be reasonable say that it was pure bad luck of the draw that placed caused AJ to lose his first round. Let’s hope this bad luck abates for Peterborough next week.
AJ