As you probably gathered from Ben's report, preparations for the Molesey Henley crews was not quite straightforward and the Thames Cup A was no exception.
Having lost Ben to the coxed four, due to Georges ‘bridge accident’ (a week before Marlow), we thought that would be the last crew change until Henley. How wrong we were. Just two days later we were hit with the news that Dan had been diagnosed with shingles and was not going to be able to race at Marlow and would be unlikely to join us for Henley.
This left us with seven athletes for an eight man boat. We found a sub for the Saturday of Marlow in Mike Valli, but due to earlier career achievements (a medal at the U23 world championships), he was not eligible for the Thames Cup at Henley.
The Sunday of Marlow saw the first boating of our Henley combination which looked like this:
Helen (Cox), Giles (Stroke), Tel Beddoe, Tom ‘George Michael’ Hammond, Douglas Bull, Grant Bigger,
Matt ‘Slammer’ Alsop, Luck Carey, Matt.
The less said about our race in the tail wind, the better; but having raced well on Saturday we had a good base to take towards Henley in a weeks time.
The Stewards saw fit to pre-qualify us, so we were lucky enough to avoid the Friday night dash that is qualifiers - but well done to all boats that successfully navigated their way to through.
We, like the other Molesey boats, moved up to Henley on the Monday to get used to the atmosphere and course, whilst avoiding the traffic that is a permanent feature on Remenham Hill. We had drawn Broxbourne in the first round which we were quietly confident about, but as with any race we still needed to go out and do a job. This is exactly what we did. We had a length and a bit at the barrier and finished with 2 ½ at the finish - one round down.
On Thursday we had been drawn to race Crewfelder, from Germany. However, due to the Germany coach's inability to read the rules, he had fielded an ineligible athlete and had been disqualified, making City of Oxford our next opponents. Again we went in quietly confident but this time we made the race a lot harder than it needed to be, allowing them to lead us to Fawley before getting our act together to win by 2 ½ lengths.
This victory had us through to Friday and up against the favourites, Tideway Scullers. We had a morning row and the crew were very focused about what we had to do if we were going to win. Unfortunately Giles had not slept well due to stomach cramps and was still not 100%. We went home for a few hours and came back to find Nick Fitz (Stroke of the Giants 8) had joined us in the boat tent. Tom and Biff discussed with Giles how he was feeling and took him to the medical tent where it was decided that he would not race. This was a major disappointment for us as we had become a good unit and we want to race that way. But the decision was made and the task had not changed - and Nick was a capable replacement for Giles.
Biff gave us our pre-race talk and a modified race plan, which appeared to be: push for 20 strokes then push for another 20, all the way down the course. We all knew that this was the only plan that would work. Off we went. The race warm-up went well and the crew was as focused as I had seen them. We lined up on the start, the umpire did his call over and then we were ready. Off we went and our start was the best of the week. The push we did at the end of the island took us slightly into the lead but this was not to last long as Scullers had a better pace and slowly edged away to win by 3 lengths.
Everyone was understandably disappointed and not sure what to do with themselves, but after we got changed and had hydrated ourselves in Remenham, the talk was about next year and the dominance that Molesey are going to show.
I would like to thank everyone that was part of the Thames Cup A boat and all the support that we received during the week. Thanks to Hilary for allowing us to invade her house for a week.
Well done to everyone that raced this year. It has been one of the best years I have had at the club, due to the club sprit that we have found and long may it continue to bring us more success like the Brit Fours this year.
