2004

Kingston Head, March 13th 2004

Engine room's view from the winning Vet eight

The Marlow RC Vet B eight took to the water at Kingston with another scratch selection to further evaluate the squad's potential for the Vets Head taking place just 8 days later. Exactly what the selection criteria are is a closely guarded secret, but if rumour is to believed then it does in fact include some rowing ability!! Organisational ability is one thing that is not lacking, but the same cannot be said for the other Club sections also at Kingston, as we were the only Marlow crew who had remembered to load some trestles onto the trailer. Needless to say, by the time we got there (Mr Tong eventually lolling along to the meeting point at Marlow RC in his usual relaxed style), there were no trestles available for us to use.

Rigging and general faffing completed, our competitive spirit was clear for all to see as we pushed into the long queue for the pontoon (sorry Vesta, you've gotta be sharper than that!). After a solid if not totally inspiring row down to the marshalling area, we set to scanning the river for the only opposition in Vet B (UL Tyrian) only to find that we had scared them off, so had to content ourselves with the two crews each side of us, a Southampton University College 8 ahead and the Pangbourne College Junior 8 - last year's winner of both Nat Schools and Henley Royal (Princess Elizabeth) - chasing. We knew they would be fast, so it was a question of how hard we would make them work and how we would cope with the blustery wind on such a bendy course.

We went off the start with a gap of about 20 seconds to each of the other crews, settling into a nice rhythm at 32 with the first section of the course providing a tail wind to help us maintain good cover. Spirits were high and the rowing controlled. At one point Kate even found time to engage Iain in a game of 20 questions, audible of course to the whole crew, along the lines of "shall we?" put in a 10 push now, or "shan't we?", eventually reaching the correct conclusion that we should, by which time most of the crew had decided that we should stop talking about it and get on with it quick!

In fact we put in a series of pushes throughout the race, with good focus by the crew on driving together and encouragement by Kate for us focus on legs or finishes (we're working towards doing them both together one day!), enabling us to make really good ground on the Southampton Uni crew. Coming into the last 750 they appeared to have spent themselves trying to hold us off and we surged past, focusing now on the fast approaching Pangbourne 8 who were building up their rhythm and boat speed for the run in to the finish.

Kate called for more and the crew dug in together, building upon the platform of work that had been maintained throughout the race and making it impossible for Pangbourne to do anything more than draw level and just get their canvass in front. Both crews seemed to gain something extra from this end of race tussle and looked suitably satisfied with themselves as they crossed the line (well, we certainly were, although there might have been the hint of annoyance in the Pangbourne boat that they didn't finish off a crew of old duffers from Marlow).

It was a good strong row which resulted in an overall placing on 18th on a start number of 19, time 16:22.71, and winning a medal for fastest Veteran 8 of the day by almost 3 seconds from Molesey 'A'.

We celebrated by sampling some of the beer and excellent cake available in the Walbrook boat house, and witnessed an amusing finale as we were walking back to the cars…….A car driven by a fairly burly looking bloke pulled up onto the pavement to make space for the London RC trailer which was waiting to turning out onto the main road. Those more experienced in such matters muttered "You really don't want to put your car there, mate" and sure enough, as London confidently turned out onto the road, the rear of the trailer swung round and gave a resounding whack to the trailing edge of the car, upon which the aforementioned burly bloke jumped out to exchange pleasantries with his new rowing friends. Oh dear! ;)

For the record…….the winning Marlow RC Vet B boat was crewed by: Bow: Gazza P, 2: Mark H, 3: Billers, 4: James T, 5: Mark D, 6: Neil M, 7: Mike S-J, Stroke: Iain P and the all important source of crew Jaffa Cakes in the cox's seat, Kate T.

2003

Fastest Vet crew again (two years on the trot)!

2002

Fastest Vet crew, winners of Vet B.