Rowing Update

Ball Cup (South) Regatta

On Sunday 12 May 2024, 11 students represented the Academy at the Ball Cup (south) Regatta at Dorney Lake, where 38 clubs and schools took part.  This was our first water-based competition of the year. The format of the competition is that timed heats are run, with the fastest 6 going through to the final.  The day is run in three divisions, giving students the opportunity to race in more than one event.

Tomasz F and Oliver N found the new oars difficult to use, given the way they hold the handles, and so didn’t perform as well as expected, finishing 10^th of the 11 crews in OpJ14.2x (year 9 open double sculls).

Joshua P raced in a single scull, trying to improve his posture to enable better power production.  He was 11^th out of 12.

We had two crews entered in WJ13.2x (y8 girls double sculls).  Racing each other in the same heat, Grace P and Zahra G were faster than Noor A and Klaudia J, but importantly, both made the top the top six, both progressing to the final.

Meanwhile, Tomasz F rowed up a year in a double with Joshua P in OpJ15.2x.  Even though they finished 14 out of 15, they were our second closest crew to the winners.  They were 2 seconds and one place behind a crew from Radnor House School, where Mr Weare also coaches.

A bit of practical maths: by taking the winning time and dividing it by our crew’s time, then multiplying by 100, we can discover what is called a “percentage of gold time”.  Tomasz and Joshua were at 86% of the winners in their event.

The two WJ13.2x returned to the water for their final, finishing 5^th and 6^th.  Grace and Zahra finished closer to the winners in the final (80.4%), whilst Noor and Klaudia performed better in the heat than in the final (72.5% in the heat), with some interesting steering!

Oliver N raced in OpJ14.1x (y9 open single sculls), where he was 9^th of 13 (83.7%)

Yuvraj B and Jasmandeep B were in a straight final in OpJ13.2x.  They were 6^th (65.8%) overall.

The two girls’ doubles combined together in a quad scull with Gaby A coxing in a straight final.  They finished 3^rd, and were the closest crew in percentage terms to the winners at 86.3%

During all of this racing on the hottest day of the year so far, Charlie M and Ryan C spent two of the divisions helping at the start on the stakeboats, watching others and learning. Gaby, Jasmandeep and Yuvraj also did a stint in one of the divisions.

Overall, our crews are about 30 seconds off the pace required.  They will be racing again in mid-June at Reading Sprint Regatta, then again at Egham Regatta at the end of June, before finishing their regatta season at Kingston Borough Regatta mid-July.