Search
Thursday, July 29, 2010 ..:: News ::..   Login
 Latest News Minimize

Current Articles | Categories | Search

Solo Pacific row!

Roz Savage (OUWLRC 1989) is rowing solo across the Pacific. See her blog here:  rozsavage.com/blog/.  Good luck and best wishes from OUWLRC.
 
Henley Women's Regatta wins

Crews featuring members of this year's lightweight Blue Boat won Intermediate Eights and Senior Coxed Fours at the 2008 Henley Women’s Regatta. The crews’ performance continues a highly successful summer racing season for OUWLRC. The club has so far won events at Metropolitan, Wallingford and Reading regattas, as well as seeing one squad member selected for the GB EUSA squad. For these Oxford lightweights, the last nine months of training and their Boat Race experience allows them to overhaul many strong crews.

The Intermediate Eights event at HWR, sponsored by PricewaterhouseCoopers, is one of the largest events in the regatta.  A compopsite crew of Lightweights and Osiris beat Furnivall Sculling Club in the final by 1 1/4 lengths. The crew was coached by OUWLRC Head Coach Alex Cavell. "They have a great team spirit and thoroughly deserved to win", he said afterwards. This composite eight will be attempting to qualify for the Remenham Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta.

Emily Piggott, OUWLRC Blue Boat '08 and former Junior International, raced with OUWBC Blues in Senior Coxed Fours. They beat a Nottingham and Molesey composite crew to win the Frank Harry Cup.

It was fantastic to cheer on (at least) another 8 OUWLRC old girls competing in various other categories throughout the course of the weekend. Well done to all those involved.
 
Summer racing for the Development Squad
Nadya Thorman writes of this year's Development Squad:

The OUWLRC Development Squad 2008 proved to be one of the most popular the club has ever seen.  With around forty girls expressing an interest in rowing, the club was forced to borrow a second boat from Oriel Boat Club in order to allow as many girls to gain as much experience as possible.

The OUWLRC Dev Squad was my first experience of rowing outside my college boat club and I feared it would be a harrowing experience; full of hardcore training and girls with nothing to say for themselves but their 2k split.  Fortunately I was very wrong.  Dev squad allowed those of us on a high (or a low) from Summer VIIIs to carry on rowing where our colleges had left off.  It provided an opportunity to row with competent rowers from all over the University and to gain some valuable racing experience. Shortly after getting together two Dev Squad crews were entered at Met regatta in the Senior 3 races.  Both performed well against crews which had been rowing together for much longer, with the A crew even getting through to the repechage.

Some stormy weather and river flooding meant that training had to be put on hold for a week but this did not deter the possibility of more racing.  Reading regatta was the next port of call.  Another scratch crew put up a gutsy performance easily beating Curlew Boat Club to make it through to the semi-finals of the Novice category.  Despite leading the race the whole way the crew were pipped to the post by Bournemouth University after losing concentration in the last 100 metres, a valuable lesson for all involved as Bournemouth then went on to win the competition.

Henley Women’s regatta marked the culmination of the OUWLRC Development Squad season.  A large squad meant that it was again possible to enter two boats into the competition.  Both boats had the opportunity to train on site in Henley for two days before racing, albeit in some very blustery weather and with one broken rudder!  Unfortunately the B boat failed to qualify, missing out by only a few seconds.  The A boat qualified however only to be given a tough draw against the experienced and rather large Putney Town A crew.  Despite jumping them off the start Putney Town’s superior experience and size saw them plough through us, they then went on to make it through to the quarter-finals. 

Overall Dev Squad 2008 was a fantastic experience.  It gave me the opportunity to receive some valuable coaching and racing experience which many colleges cannot offer, as well as meeting people from all over the university.  The emphasis is certainly on enjoyment and I am sure many of the girls will be returning to give trialling a go in September.
 
Summer Racing for OUWLRC
Caris Marsh reports on wins at Wallingford, Metropolitan and Reading Regattas:
 
“HAWK!”*
 
The aptly named Wallingford Regatta (held at Dorney Lake, over 25 miles east of Wallingford itself) always attracts stiff competition and this year was no exception.
 
The OUWLRC team consisted of just four determined athletes (Rose, Baines, Felicity and Caris) and one miniature being with an enlarged cranium (Becky). Together they made up “hawk-four”.
 
The team competed in both the WS3 and WS4 coxed fours. Three Heats. One Final. No second chances.
 
First up, WS3. This was a learning curve. After an average row in an extremely fast heat and very narrowly missing out on qualifying for the final, the four decided that it was time to stop nearly winning and start actually winning.
 
Round 2, WS4. The four picked up the place and qualified for the final (in a time that would have easily won the S3 event) going on to a convincing win, despite a marginal amount of protest from a Vesta crew in the first 1000m of the race. 
 
 
*no hawks were either harmed or alarmed as a result of “hawk-four’s” awesome rhythm. We think.
 
‘The Dawn of a New Era’ at Metropolitan Regatta
 
The Saturday of Met was a sad day. This would be the last time that “hawk-four” would row together this season. The four produced some decent performances, narrowly missing out on the final of WS3 4+.
 
Sarah Cornick and Linda Reynard raced their singles in the WS3 1x category. This was also the first racing for two newly formed Dev Squad eights.
 
Sunday saw the dawn of a new era, the era of the composite eight. This particular combination consisted of four of the 4 members of ‘hawk-four’ (Caris, Felicity, Baines and Becky), the ex-pres/Taylornator (Katie) and 4 members of OUWBC (Phoebe, Harriet, Katja and Lucy). The eight started their reign as they meant to go on, dominating the WS3 8+ event.
 
Domination, Round 2
 
Reading Amateur Regatta (RAR) is not held at Dorney Lake, but the competition is still stiff as a board.
 
Despite being a two day event, we felt that our presence was only required for one day. Today’s combination was minus Baines, Lucy and Katja, and plus Rose, Emily (OUWBC) and Hannah Seddon (our awesome dev-squadder).
 
It was side-by-side racing with two in each heat (awesome practice for Henley) and despite being shattered from a week of hard training the crew managed to clock good times in four out of four races. The eight won the first three races comfortably to make it into the final where they met with Vesta’s revamped and rejuvenated eight. At the end of the race the Oxford composite eight came through victorious, winning by a margin of just three-feet.
 
Sarah Cornick was also there, in her trusty single, sculling away, like a sculling daemon.

 
Jen qualifies for the 2008 Olympics

Jen Goldsack (OUWLRC 2003), with her doubles partner Renee Hykel, qualified today for the 2008 Olympics in Beijing. They will represent the United States in the lightweight double scull. Congratulations Jen, and heartfelt best wishes from OUWLRC!
 
BUSA Success

Over the first May bank holiday weekend, OUWLRC squad member, Sarah Cornick, travelled up to Strathclyde for the BUSA rowing championships. The weekend drew crews from universities across the country providing some high quality racing across all different boat classes from Eights to Singles on a course that has previously hosted the Commonwealth Rowing Regatta and World U23 Championships.
 
Sarah has already rowed in the boat race against Cambridge 7 times, 4 times as an openweight and 3 times as a lightweight, and from the start of the season until the Boat Race each year, rowing in Eights is the focus. The summer season however provides the opportunity to train and race in other boat classes and Sarah chose to enter her single scull in the women’s Championship Lightweight event at the BUSA regatta.
 
Although the forecast rain stayed away, a strong headwind down the course made conditions difficult for a lightweight single sculler. However, Sarah made easy work of the wind and progressed through the rounds to eventually win a silver medal behind a sculler from Durham who is on the verge of making the GB U23 team. This result has gained Sarah selection as the lightweight women’s sculler in the GB team that will travel to Croatia for the European Universities Championships at the end of the season - an exceptional achievement especially given that unlike Sarah, most of the competition have been training and competing in sculling boats for most of the season.
 
Hopefully next year when the BUSA regatta returns to its usual location of Nottingham, more Oxford squad and college crews will be able to make the journey to these Championships so the Oxford has a presence that is similar to the other rowing universities.  
On the same weekend, an OUWLRC coxed four, raced locally at Wallingford regatta. They also had a successful regatta, winning the S4 event and posting one of the fastest women’s coxed fours times of the day.
 
 
New Resolute Donated
Misha Joukowsky, a longstanding generous benefactor to the club, has donated a new Resolute race eight to OUWLRC. This is a new “super lightweight” shell which has been developed specifically for lightweights by Resolute, and is the only one in the UK to date. It was first raced at the Henley Boat Races this March. A boat naming ceremony will be held to coincide with Henley Royal Regatta, the exact date remains to be confirmed. We thank Misha for his continued generosity and support.

 
Page 2 of 2
Previous Page | Next Page
 Print   
Copyright 2006 by OUWLRC   Terms Of Use  Privacy Statement