Maidenhead Rowing Club

The weather was awful. There was a strong cross wind which had the Leander flag pointing straight towards Crazies Hill, plus there were gusts as well. The river seethed with white tops every time a gust came, and crews were seen to stop virtually dead in the water.

The first crew was Carmel Bevan (racing a year up, she had already done the Maidenhead internal head that morning), Emma Kerns (racing a year up), Harriet Ingal, and Aimee Broadbent with Jasper van der Valk as cox. This was Aimee's first ever external race. The girls rowed well and kept their timing and length all down the course. They finished 4th with a time of 15mins 54 sec behind Claires Court in third position with 15mins 9 , Headingly A in 2nd with 14 mins 6 and winners LEH with 14 mins 10.

The girls second crew was even younger. It was Fifi Bevan,(racing up 2 years), Lexy Dobson (racing up 2 years), Rebecca Reeve (racing up 2 years), Lucy Brockwell (racing up a year) and cox Jack Beaumont. This was Jack's first race as cox. Again the girls rowed well and finished well.....but they were generally agreed to be the noisiest crew on the course. One can't help thinking that if more of the effort put into chatting and arguing had been directed to rowing they may have done even better. And poor Jack may not have got out of the boat so hen pecked!
That said, they finished a very worthy 6th with a time of 16 minutes 49secs having overtaken Marlow on the bank-side after Marlow refused to move into the stream.
Both coxes did an excellent job and kept the crews far enough out from the bank to ensure they weren't beached......as happened to Marlow (after Maidenhead B had overtaken them) and Borlase.
It's interesting to note that there has been an improvement in the time for this course, even given the awful weather, of about 3 minutes since the same event last year.

The MJ15 4X of Marcus Clover, Tim Wildbore, Sam Prosser and Matt Reeve with Rebecca Reeve coxing came second in a time of 12m 12 seconds, just 11 seconds behind Windsor Boys School. The Maidenhead crew rowed well and kept their cool in a melee of 5 or 6 crews fighting for the same water in the final stretches. This was a good result.

On their first outing together, the promising MJ14 4X crew of Alex Ride, James Henderson, Matt Powell and Robert Ashburner coxed well by Carmel Bevan, came 4th out of six crews despite one insecure footstretcher coming adrift just after the start of the race, and the collection of a couple of the crabs readily available on the rough waters.”

The Advanced Maidenhead boys and girls missed out on Henley this year as they were busy carrying out training in singles. 7 junior athletes have been invited to take part in stage 2 GB trials next weekend. This GB junior trial is now down to the top 50 boys and the top 40 girls in the country.