Jesus College Boat Club

Jesus College Boat Club

Head of the River Race

2010

The Crew

Stroke: Erlend 'Duke' Reiten (C) 7: Ben Fowles

6: Bobby Sharp _{5 Ben Daly}

4: Tim Parker 3: Tom Wickersham

2: Barnaby Levin Bow: Oren Margolis

The Plan

After an extremely successful Torpids campaign, one final race remained for JCBC to crown this term's rowing as the most successful for the boat club in a generation.

The prestigious Head of the River Race is an annual competition held on the Tideway a week before the Boat Race. 400 men's crews are timed over the 4.25 mile championship course from Mortlake to Putney.

It had been a very long time since Jesus had entered a crew for this race, and without the experience of entering a big external event before, we ended up organizing our entry at relatively short notice. This meant we couldn't put out the full M1 Torpids crew as some crew members had other

commitments, but Ben Fowles and Ben Daly from Michaelmas term's 1st VIII stepped in to help us out. As the ambidextrous rower in the crew, I was moved from the 5 seat to the 2 seat.

Our new crew faced a tough challenge. To train ourselves to row well together in just 2 days, then race over a distance 4 times longer than that which we were used to in Oxford.

The Training

We arrived at Dulwich College boat club in Putney, who kindly allowed us to use their racking space, on Thursday morning, two days before the race.

It was striking just how massive the Tideway seemed in comparison to the Isis, the only stretch of river many of us had ever rowed on.

View of the Tideway upstream from Putney Bridge.

Still, we were mainly there to have fun, and we were keen to get on the water. The Colonel had been trailered down in advance of our arrival and, after putting it back together, we walked up the road to Thames Rowing Club, who generously allowed us to use their changing facilities and bar. On arriving at Thames, we discovered we had picked the same facility as Jesus College Cambridge, who warmly welcomed us with the invitation, “If you guys want to do some sparring before the race, we're up for it!” though they grew more friendly upon realising that we weren't aiming to finish quite as highly as they were.

Our host clubs on the Tideway

As we donned our wellies and prepared to wade into the Thames before pushing off, the rowing fans among us were impressed by the world class crews boating and landing around us. Cambridge University, Molesey 1st VIII (a crew with numerous GB Olympic medal winners), and Isis amongst others were all training in the same place as us!

Our first outing as a crew seemed to go fairly well. We took time to familiarise ourselves with the landmarks, then rowed a long piece back to Putney, getting out and heading to the Thames RC bar for one of the cook's “rower sized” portions of food. We tried a faster piece on the second outing and things seemed to be looking up

Having rowed around 25km in total the day before, we returned to Putney on Friday for our final outing before the race. The weather was against us this time with the wind under Hammersmith Bridge whipping up waves large enough to crash over the bows and into the boat. It was like rowing at sea, even our Viking captain Erlend found it difficult.

We fared better than other crews though, after landing, we stopped to help out a German team whose boat had taken on so much water it took 14 people just to lift it enough to tip the water out.

The Race

The day had finally arrived, and we all got to the boathouses early to soak up the atmosphere. We had to boat at 12.30 in order to arrive at our marshalling position East of Barnes Bridge for 13.10.

Rowing past Fulham's Craven Cottage on the way upstream (actually taken post-race)

We then had to sit and wait as the crews ahead of us began the race. We were crew number 355, so the wait was about an hour and twenty minutes. Initially it was quite exciting watching some of the more famous crews such as Leander and Molesey go past, however it soon began to rain, and we had to sit it out, protected by our trusty FRJs. As we looked on, a boat ripped in half by a collision with the corner of the bridge floated by, being chased after by the rescue marshals.

When the rain passed we finally began to move, spinning on the far side of Chiswick Bridge to take a run up to the start line. The starts were all filmed, ours can be watched here 6 minutes 20 seconds

in: http://www.rowtv.co.uk/G10/hor9.htm.

We pushed hard off Merchant Taylor's School who were starting behind us, quickly putting a lot of distance between us. Coming through Barnes bridge, we then settled into the rhythm that we would need to hold for the next two and a half miles. Just over a mile into the race and we knew we had been racing as far as we ever had on the Isis, and we were only just over a quarter of the way there, yet without the pressure of a crew threatening to bump us from behind, it was easy just to enjoy racing.

We continued to put distance between ourselves and the crews behind us coming round the bend into the final 2 miles. Then, going under Hammersmith Bridge, we lifted the rate, aiming to get a burst of speed going for the home stretch.

Jesus fire it up going under Hammersmith Bridge.

We kept up the pace past the mile post, and built up for one last push as we went past Fulham FC. We rowed hard to the finish with all the energy we had left, collapsing as we finally crossed the line.

Our day's worth of rowing wasn't over yet though. We had to row down to the other side of a Putney railway bridge, then spin and row all the way back to Barnes so the boat could be collected and taken back to Oxford.

The crew row under Putney bridge on the way back to Barnes.

Exhausted, we rowed the 4 miles back upstream at a snail's pace. Finally, we reached Emanuel School boathouse after what seemed like hours. As soon as the boat was put on the trailer to return to Oxford, we gorged ourselves on burgers and hot dogs from the nearby barbecue and headed to the nearby Bull's Head Inn for a few well earned post-race beers.

The End?

When the final results came out, we found out that we had finished the 318th fastest crew, up 37 places from our starting position, a very respectable performance which beat those of rival Colleges and HORR regulars Brasenose and Merton.

Most importantly, it had been an incredible experience, the memory of which would stay with all of us involved for the rest of our lives.

There remains the question of the future of this race for JCBC.

With only two days of training, we managed to improve our initial standing by 37 places. Entering a crew which can commit more time to training next year may well give us the potential to break into the top 250 crews.

Looking at the names of some of the other Oxford Colleges which entered this year, Hertford, Worcester, Wolfson, it seems that this is the race to enter if the boat club has real ambitions of improving its position in bumps racing.

Furthermore, our sponsors seemed very pleased that we entered such a large event, raising the profile of the boat club.

The date of the race is a very convenient 2 weeks after Hilary term ends. Since this is just before many people begin to worry about revision, it is the perfect time to bring together rowers who want to enter Summer VIIIs in M1.

All it would take to get a committed crew to enter next year is a little organization. A couple of weeks training together in Oxford before heading to the Tideway on the Thursday or Wednesday before would be ideal.

The experience of rowing and racing on this stretch of river was fantastic and should definitely be offered to the top rowers in college every year if possible.

I will certainly make every effort to arrange for JCBC's entry into the race next year, and it is my hope that a tradition of entering the race is continued well into the future.

Furthermore, now that it has been demonstrated that entering external races is not so difficult to sort out, this raises the exciting possibility of more external race entries to come for JCBC.

- Barnaby Levin, Race Organizer Acknowledgements:

Google Street View for Putney Bridge, and boathouse images. Tom Wickersham for Fulham FC and Hammersmith Bridge photos. William Heard for crew pub photo.

First and Third Trinity College Cambridge Boat Club for course map.

Special Thanks To:

Jesus College Oxford for awarding the David Rhys sporting grant. Jesus College Boat Club for paying the race entry fee.

Tom Saunders for arranging use of Dulwich College and Thames Rowing Club facilities. All friends and their families who accommodated us during our stay in London.

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