By Aaron Sims
As a favour to the club, and for a chance to see Dorney Lake again, Aaron offered to drive LUBC down to Windsor for Marlow Regatta. Not fancying their chances for the Saturday, the club decided to enter the 1km sprints on the Sunday as a nice way to finish off the season. LUBC kindly offered to take the double down on the trailer for Matt and Aaron to have a crack at some southern competition.
The crew who have been racing at IM3 level found the regatta offered no such category and the lowest for doubles was IM1, a daunting challenge but one that the boys were up for fully. With the competition being two crews from the Irish club Carlow RC, an Isle of Ely/Rob Roy Composite and a crew from Wallingford, the opposition was of notable reputations, something that worried the boys but was expected nonetheless.
Taking off from the start saw the two Carlow crews snatch an early lead with Wallingford in hot pursuit. Aaron and Matt found themselves not far behind, neck and neck with the IEL/ROB crew throughout the race, managing a half a length lead (more through a high rating than power. Standard). Crossing the line saw the boys exhausted and struggle to get the boat back to the trailer. It then turned out that Wallingford had been disqualified through some dodgy steering causing them to veer into one of the other lanes and towards a Carlow crew, this resulted in JOG earning 3rd place in IM1, an achievement Matt and Aaron were exceptionally proud of.
Aaron then went onto sub in stroke seat of the LUBC Men’s IM3 VIII due to one of the crew having been injured earlier in the week. The race was stacked against them with opposition including Durham Uni, and . The race start was pretty good for a scratch crew and the margin was not too sparse between the four boats, although LUBC came fourth overall in the end, they managed to maintain an overlap between themselves and the DUBC crew in the next lane, something that was unexpected and quite pleasing seeing as that crew were attending HRR Qualifiers the following week.
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