It's 10:13 AM and we've just had our last full English breakfast with our wonderful host Ms. Valerie Nicholson and we have arrived at the final day of racing for the 2007-2008 season. The men's eight has reached the final of the Temple Challenge Cup by beating Southampton University, Oxford Brookes, Grand Valley State University USA, and Stanford University USA. In the finals the 1V will race against the University of Western Ontario crew who defeated Harvard University's freshmen in the semifinal. Judging from times to the Barrier and times between Fawley and the Barrier I think we have to expect that there will be some fluidity in the first 3:40 seconds of the race and that it will sort itself out after that.Crews that are leading after the Barrier win 86% of the time while crews leading after Fawley win 90% of the time. However, that statistic might be misleading as many of the crews who have made the final have been in the 14% or 10% at least once during the regatta.
This is very much a familiar face regatta for me as Tom and Peter Graves are racing in the Double Sculls Challenge Cup final today against the US Olympic 2X of Elliot Hovey and Wes Piermarini and they go off at 12:00 PM.
My college teammate and good friend Andy Liverman races in the finals of the Prince of Wales Challenge Cup for 4X as the bowman of the California Rowing Club. A former lightweight he is somewhat dwarfed by Mike Holbrook who weighed in at 240 lbs or 17 stone 2 lbs.
Henry Palmer, Trinity '05, is racing in the five seat of the Leander Ladies' Challenge Plate entry and will face a really tough challenge from R.S.V.U. Okeanos & D.S.R. Laga, Holland. They look like they would have had a great shot at the Grand Challenge Cup.
Weather for today - about 15 degrees Celsius, windy, and pretty steady rain. English dreariness at its best. For full results of the racing please click here.
Oh yes, really heartfelt thanks to my crew for their wonderful gift last night...and fun conversation about the business of rowing. I had missed that in the days since we stopped rowing and it was good to be back together in the middle of England in a 15th century pub. Pretty memorable stuff...
