Henley Women's Regatta

Hats off to the Henley Women's Regatta organisers for keeping the regatta running so smoothly. That weekend the river was extremeley high and there were some hideous winds that almost forced the regatta to cancel. The regatta organisers did a fantastic job to keep it running despite the conditions. Although there were no record times set Finals day on Sunday turned out to be a great day, cementing the regatta's 25th anniversary.

We entered the Elite doubles comepetition as the last chance we had to race another double side by side before the European Championships in September (pending selection). We also boated our Leander Henley Royal quad for the first time! Our quad line up is our European double, and Rachel Gamble-Flint and Sarah Cowburn who raced a double at the U23 World Rowing Championships last year. 

 

This is a shot early on in the race of our Leander quad, on the right in the white boat, racing Vesper USA

Because of how the draw worked out, Tina and I had four races on Sunday! Henley Women's Regatta (HWR) is only a 1500m course, considerably shorter than our usual 2km race length. 

Our semi finals were not too taxing in either boat, although we had poor starts in both of them and had a little ground to make up. 

The final of the quads we raced Vesper USA. We had a few steering warnings off the start so they just managed to slip ahead of us by the end of the island. Once we had found our rhythm (and station!) we managed to sit ahead of them to the finish. It was great racing the Henley stretch, we were loving the home advantage.  We finished over a length ahead of Vesper.

In the doubles final we raced Rowing Ireland. This was our 4th race of the day and we both were feeling it in the legs. It was a solid win, over 3 lengths ahead, and good to get some last bit of racing in the double before we start our Europeans training.

It was great to assert our dominance in this regatta, and racing in the Elite category we met international crews in both events.

Sir Steve Redgrave was there for the prizegiving...

And this is a shot of our double winning the final against Rowing Ireland. We are on the left. Photo taken from the umpires launch...

Now we will be concentrating on the quad for the next 10 days to get us up to speed for the big event: Henley Royal Regatta! This is a massive event in the social and rowing calendar, and a great opportunity for us in Olympic year to have a shot at winning whilst the Olympic crews are away preparing for the 2012 Games.

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Some more photos from the regatta:

Waiting to be checked by a marshall before the semi final of 4x

Racing the final of the 4x

Paddling to the start of the semi final, thank you to Buff and Headsweats!

Off the start of the 2x Final

Happy winners of Elite quad. L-R Tina Stiller, Erica Bodman, Rachel Gamble-Flint, Sarah Cowburn

 

Thanks to 110% Play Harder, Headsweats, SunSense, Faith in Nautre, Hunter and Buff for their product support!

Amsterdam Holland Beker

Earlier this month we took our double to the Holland Beker regatta in Amsterdam. We were really looking forward to racing some other doubles, finally! It was going to be a novel experience racing people in the same boat classification. We had some good comepetion entered with the Czech Olympic double racing both days and racing on the Sunday the Dutch Olympic double, who were newly qualified at the Lucerne Olympic Qualification Regatta.

We were welcomed on our first day of training to a lovely flat calm lake. Sadly this wasn't to last and our first day of racing was a tad breezy (luckily a tailwind).
It's always strange racing for the first time in a new combination. You get to see how your crew mates behave before racing, some people are completly silent, others won't shut up and you get the occasional nervously angry person that you have to tip toe around. Luckily we are both pretty similar...chilled, happy to chat, generally covering up any signs of nerves with a smile. Part of this was actual excitement to race, we both love racing and we have a VERY long season this year so are relishing any chance to go fast!

A very windy Bosbaan

We had a straight final both days, Saturday and Sunday. On Saturday we had a five boat final, with The Czech Olympic double, the Antosova sisters (they are a long established boat who got bronze at the first world cup this year), a Swedish club double, a Swiss club double, and a Japanese club double.  Unfortunately the Saturday race lacked any real side by side racing. We found ourselves in a bit of a void during the race, way behind the Antosova sisters but a way ahead of the club boats too. We finished 16 secs behind the Czech and almost 10 seconds ahead of the Swiss. However, it was good to brush away any first race jitters and good to find ourselves so far ahead of other club doubles. Results can be seen here.

Sunday turned out to be a beautiful sunny day and we got some great racing. Our start didn't exactly go to plan, after the first couple strokes Erica hit some water and completely lost her right blade! Some good skills from her and a couple of cool heads and we were back on track and managed to make our way back through the field. After the first 500m the CZE 2x took a good lead and ourselves and NED emerged ahead of the remainder of the field. 

We were four lanes away from the Dutch which made the battle a little more diluted than had we been in neighbouring lanes, but Tina kept an eye on their boat and we fought our way down the course, settling onto a good rhythm. At the 1km, half way mark, we were 0.9 seconds behind the Dutch and by 1500m (500m to go) we had reduced the gap to 0.65seconds. In our push for the line we drew them in to within half a length of us, but their sprint finish was much more impressive than ours, putting them 3.4 seconds ahead of us overall. We were happy to have such a solid first half and now need to go away and work on our sprint to the line. It was altogther a great experience to get a close race with the Dutch and come away with a new PB time. Results here

Happy double post racing!

Here is a video of our race, courtesy of Tina's parents. Great footage from the moving grandstand. We are the yellow boat closest to the camera. follow the link

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j2i0My6u4i0

We were pleased to be able to use our 110% Play Harder compression leggings between races to help us recover from racing.

Thanks also to Headsweats, SunSense, Faith in Nautre, Hunter and Buff for their product support so we could survive the weekend!