This year, Univ Women’s 1st VIII entered the Women’s Head. Looking to make the most out of a solid term’s training, we wanted to improve on our position over the last few years.

We boated in the sunshine - all-in-one, sunglasses and visor weather making a pleasant change from the majority of our water time over the past few months. After a couple of hours marshalling and watching other crews race, we were raring to go.

A solid start meant that we were soon at a confident race pace, which the crew then held for the remainder of the course. We were gaining on the boat that had started ahead of us from the offset, and many thanks goes to our cox for the day, Kitty Bourne Swinton-Hunter, for some calm but aggressive coxing. This gave us one overtake by the time we entered the middle third of the race. The lack of landmarks made the support we had from the bank even more special over the next few kilometres.

Coming under Hammersmith Bridge and past Harrods, we started to make significant grounds on another crew. Training at a very gusty Dorney lake certainly gave us the experience to power through a chunky headwind and overtake. By this point we were heading rapidly into our wind-up past the black buoy and to the finish, and overtook another crew as we crossed the line.

By placing 56th overall we were the fastest Oxbridge college crew, and 2nd in our category. Well done to all the girls for a committed term of land training and rowing, and thank you to our coach, John Ewans, for all his support.

Crew

• W1 Women's Head of the River 2013/2014 (8+)

Posted on Mar 31, 2014

posted under: womenracingwhorr

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