Cambridge Trial VIII's, 19^th December 2001

And so to the Cambridge trial VIII's race, a week after Oxford.

The sky was cloudy and grey, the temperature low, at least for those in the flotilla of following launches, but the wind was low and the water was flat, in contrast to some trial races of recent years.

Both crews boated in plenty of time for the scheduled 2pm start, though the start was delayed until 2:15 to wait for more stream, so both crews had lenghtly warm-ups on the Wandsworth stretch below Putney bridge. As it was neither crew showed up at the start for a few minutes after that. "Disqualify them both" Guy Pooley cheerfully remarked from one of the assembled launches waiting to follow the race.

There was no hanging about though when they did start, and both crews, quite close to each other (there are no stakeboats for trials races), set off hard, rating in the forties past the Putney hard. Yellow Lorry, in a (yellow, what other colour is there?) Empacher, containing marginally fewer of Cambridge's world medallists but correspondingly more Blues, used their Middlesex advantage and moved ahead by the Mile Post, though not by more than half a length. Red Lorry, in their Vespoli (no, it wasn't red...), hung on to them however and Dunn looked impressive in the stroke seat, his long hard finishes a slight contrast to Robson's, which looked to be shorter and more ragged by comparison. Colin Swainson, at bow in Yellow Lorry as he had been at bow in the Boat Race last year, but there was no repeat performance of the crabbing which precipated umpire Rupert Obhlozer's re-start.

Red Lorry made a bit of a comeback by Harrods furniture depository, very nearly getting back to even by the bridge, but never quite getting there. Along the Barn Elms-Harrods reach Walker coxing Red Lorry allowed Griggs to dictate a course close to the Surrey shore, at times so far over that she was out of the stream too. Umpire Harris did practise semaphore a couple of times endeavouring to move Griggs back to mid-river, at each point the boats were in danger of over-lapping blades, but Griggs did respond and the race stayed clean. Still, presumably she has local experience as well as whatever Alan Innes has coached, as she went to St. Pauls. There was a kind of inevitability about the race now, if Stallard the president and his men continued to work and did nothing wrong, the pressure they had been under from behind would become more containable as the race progressed.

And so it turned out. Along Chiswick Eyot Yellow Lorry established a commanding lead, first a length clear and then 2 lengths by the Bandstand at Duke's Meadow. Dunn's crew began to look a bit scrappy now in the way that crews do when behind, although Dunn's only outwardly visible concession to the predicament he was in was to look over his shoulder to see where the other crew were. He will probably have wished he hadn't though, as he would have had to strain quite a lot to see Yellow Lorry getting ready to shoot Barnes Bridge 3 lengths to the good.

The final verdict was a win to Yellow Lorry by 4 lengths in a time of 18:05 to Red Lorry's 18:17.

In a touching sign of squad cameraderie, the boats came together under Chiswick bridge and congratulations and commiserations were exchanged before the paddle back. Guy Pooley said that he had won most of his trial races, but the experience of paddling back to Putney having lost was not one he was at all enthusiastic about. Facing the oarsmen when they got back were the dual demands of sponsor and media commitments and, more importantly (or at least undertaken with rather more obvious relish) the attempt to eat more sausage rolls and drink more soup than anyone else...

Yellow Lorry: Colin Swainson (bow), Ben Clare, Jon Alexander, Sebastian Mayer, Josh West, Lukas Hirst, Tom Stallard, Ewan Robson (str), Eleanor Griggs (cox).

Rowing Service report by Trevor Chambers