Rowing reaps the rewards at BUCS Regatta

IC once again brought home the bacon at BUCS regatta, capturing the Men’s Victor Ludorum and finishing 2nd in the medals table over the three days and finishing with the most BUCS points of any university in the country (again) despite the absence of big lad Henry ‘gully’ Gooder and token chopper Ben Spencer-Jones.

The big BUCS extravaganza began as always after half the squad had just finished their exams and the other half were beginning the next week. Only one thing was on everyone’s mind – knocking Durham off the top of the overall victor ludorum. Not to win it for themselves but just to ruin any foundation to Durham’s claim that they are ‘The most successful undergraduate rowing programme in the country’ (lol good one lads).

The trip began with a convoy of 3 minibuses filled with mens squad, womens squad and novice women and after an (for once) entirely uneventful journey, which required some big tunes and large amounts of French abuse to drivers Paul Jones and Fabien Evrard to liven things up a bit, we arrived late on Friday evening in Nottingham.

Day 1

Every morning saw an unnecessarily early start for everyone with time trials starting at 8am, but especially for IC’s not-so-big lads who had to weigh in at 6am, the only upside being Stu Whitelaw had actually tried booking rooms for 50 people over 2 days in advance, rather than being surprised at there being nowhere available to stay near Nottingham (as happened last year when there was some big event in Nottingham which every University in the country was going to or something). Anyway, again everything somehow went to plan.

The first medals of the weekend came in the lightweight singles. In the Intermediate lightweight single final, despite having a gentleman’s agreement to save their legs for the lightweight 4, Myles Holborough saw red and sped off in front of Le Captain Paul Jones, taking the silver medal, whilst Paul cruised to 5th place, putting in a cheeky sprint to overtake an Irish guy who had blown out of his tree. This was followed by a bronze medal for Wilf Kimberley in the Champ light single.

Big dogs Mel Wilson and Michelle Vezie brought home the first medal for the women, capturing the bronze medal in the champ women’s pairs. This was followed by Jade ‘Chubba’ Hubbard and Nicola Mason, who did well to finish 6th in the final of a savage champ lightweight doubles event.

Newbie Sorcha Cotter began the first of a series of phenomenal beginners’ results for the weekend, just the wrong side of a 3-way tussle for bronze, finishing 5th, and 51 seconds behind a Cambridge girl who was definitely not a beginner. She was followed later by the ruddy lads men’s beginner four (Shobi Grinstead, Juha Leppanen, Nico Lautard, Giles Mortimer & cox Lucy Osbourn who went in hard and were leading until the 1500m mark where they just didn’t quite have the power to hold on. Big 2 man Juha Leppanen can only be described as blowing out of his ring piece, with some unbelievable tekkers in the 100m.

The first of the weekend’s golds came from the men’s lightweight 4 (Paul Jones, Myles Holborough, Wilf Kimberley & Tim Richards), who successfully defended their title for the 5th year running. This year saw not only an IC/UL showdown, but also a showdown between brothers, with Tim Richard’s younger brother James Richards stroking the UL boat. This race showed Tim to be the better brother, as IC cruised through a fast starting UL to take the gold.

The second of Saturday’s big lad gold medals came from the women’s champ 4 of Mel Wilson, Michelle Vezie, Isa von Loggia, and powerhouse Lily Beadle. Despite being 2 seconds down off the start on some large UEL girls from Texas, the girls ploughed back through to snatch the gold by a second (it would probably have been like 10 if Isa wasn’t a UL chopper).

The final race on Saturday was the blue ribboned event, the men’s 8. In the semi-finals, the lads had stormed through UL to take 2nd place and looked to be in the hunt for the medals. Unfortunately UL had clearly been saving themselves and had a storming finish to take the bronze medal, pushing IC back in to 4th place.

Day 2

Saturday evening saw a blow to our VL efforts with illness striking down MVP Mel Wilson and Lidia Cammack. On top of this, fat lad Harry Mayne had seen a good bulking opportunity on finding Mr Halls’ barbecue, weighing in at a solid 75kg back at the hotel. This called for some serious sweating down, with Harry adopting the Dan Powell 4am makeshift sauna technique. With only seconds to spare, the men’s lightweight 8 managed to weigh in and finally get some food in.

This clearly didn’t even phase Mr Mayne as the lightweight 8 (Fabien Evrard, Harry Mayne, Nico Lautard, Romain Barnoud, Paul Jones, Myles Holborough, Wilf Kimberley, Tim Richards & cox Ellie Smith) brought home the first of a gluttony of silver medals, just losing out to UL who were definitely entered in the right event and had definitely not bent the rules (rules are made to be broken right?). Kimberley & Richards still couldn’t quite crack the light double and took the silver medal.

There was a tussle for the bronze medal between two IC girls in the intermediate singles - Michelle Vezie and Isa von Loggia. Despite a big finish from Isa, Michelle just managed to hold on to the bronze. Imagine the places she could go if she actually rowed at IC.

The two big results of the day however came in the intermediate mens double and the Beginner mens 8. Ben Thomas pulled Harry Mayne along to a big 1st half, getting 5 seconds up on the rest of the field and trucked to victory, bringing home the only gold of the day.

Words can’t really do justice to how big the beginner men went this weekend. The men’s 8 (Aris Aristodemou, Nicholas Robertson, Rob Mcpherson, Nico Lautard, Shobi Grinsted, Juha Leppanen, Tom Peake, E-Jazz Ahamadeen and cox Lucy Osbourn) brought home the silver medal, missing out on a gold by only 0.66 seconds. Bear in mind that in the last few years, the D-final was a decent result. There were a number of other strong results with the men’s coxed 4 finishing 4th, and the women’s 8 and light 4- finishing 6th.

Day 3

So as we got up at the crack of dawn once more, the mood was a bit melancholy - it appeared the overall VL trophy was beyond us. However there was some light at the end of the tunnel as IC lead the contest for the men’s team championship over UL by just a handful of points (the trophy for this was bigger than the VL trophy anyway) and the Monday events looked like they were in our favour.

The biggest morale boost of the day came from an event IC is starting to have a bit of a tradition in – the men’s beginner single. Filling some seriously big shoes previously filled by the likes of Tom Jones and Paddy Hudson was Rob McPherson, who also more than doubled his total number of singles outings throughout the day. Lifting the rate to 24 for a big finish, Rob took the bronze medal (rumours that he started his massive sprint to the line when he saw Yewande Adesida watching from the bank are yet to be confirmed). Disaster almost struck 10 meters from the finish after a collision with a buoy 10 meters from the line, but McPherson managed to hold himself together and stay upright.

The Richards/Kimberley lightweight dream team combined once again in the lightweight pair. However in contrast to previous year they had some stiff competition, finishing 2nd to an Edinburgh pair who had beaten also beaten them in the double the day before. However, the lads weren’t going to let themselves get beat at sweep. It was nip and tuck all the way to the 1500 where the boys put in a big lad push to get half a length up. This proved to be a coup de grace as the Edinburgh bowman blew and got pulled across 2 lanes, with Kimberley blowing 50 metres later.

After a quick walk, rehydrate and a couple of collapses from exhaustion, the pair then went straight in to the lightweight 4x with Paul Jones and Myles Holborough to attempt to defend their title for the 4th year running. On seeing everyone getting tired, Holborough knew it was time for an inspirational speech. It began something along the lines of “Come on lads we’re gonna fcking win this one, Fck UL” and was followed by some more expletives that I’m told can’t be put in, despite being highly amusing. Anyway, the speech clearly worked as the boys led Edinburgh out of the start and finished with clear water, with 3rd place 15 seconds behind.

Stepping up to replace Rory Sullivan as token club geezer, Ben Thomas teamed up with Tom Jones for the men’s (intermediate) pair. Despite Tom Jones just getting worse and worse down the course, the boys put in a DJ Sully style big finish, taking down Newcastle and winning the silver medal behind Queens Belfast. Other strong performances came with a bronze medal from Michelle Vezie and Isa von Loggia in the women’s champ double, 4th place in the women’s champ coxed 4 (Michelle Vezie, Isa von Loggia, Lily Beadle & Jade Hubbard) and 5th for the Hubbard/ Mason duo in the light pair. A special mention has to go to the novice women, who just missed out on the final, and finished 2nd in the B final.

So, all in all we finished with the men’s vICtor LADorum trophy, 2nd in the medals table and 3rd in the women’s team trophy and 3rd in the overall VL. This of course called for a big celebration on Thursday night, with MVP Seb de Trafford ending up wandering around in Vauxhall pretending to a secret agent. I’m looking forward to seeing our new social sec in action next year. Well done to everyone who raced once again, especially the beginner guys and girl for stepping up to the occasion big time. Our thanks must go to all the parents who helped out once again and made the annual weekend of hell bearable. Cheers then.