Gold for OUWBC
THERE IS AN air of celebration this evening as the squad sits on the coach from Birmingham arguing over the best cocktail to start with in the Duke of Cambridge on our "big night out" writes Louisa Rowbotham.
Although sitting in the National Indoor Arena watching 100 people at a time sweat it out on an erg is not every person's ideal way of spending their Sunday afternoon, insanity had its reward this weekend with a gold medal for OUWBC's eight top athletes in the Women's University team event. The Oxford men also won the Men's team event.
As a bench mark for the Women's Boat Race in March, our top eight averaged 5 seconds per person faster than Cambridge's top eight (7.16 versus 7.21) and our second 8 average was an outstanding 23 seconds faster than the Tabs' (7.29 versus 7.52).
An inspirational performance was given by Jessica Wilson, the president, who pulled a personal best of 7:00.8 mins in winning the BUSA open event. This would have been impressive in itself, but the fact that Jess fell off her bike two weeks ago and broke her wrist lends an air of even greater heroism.
Individual achievements aside though, the strength and depth displayed by the whole squad is something that we are very excited about.
This all comes merely a week after success at the Fours' Head in which our top four of Vanessa Harding, Chris Bursill, Sarah Waldron, Sarah Martin and Mike Floyd came fourth overall and won Senior 2 coxed fours by 30 seconds.
Our second crew were seventh overall and narrowly missed out on the Senior 3 pennant to the Cambridge top four.
Heading into the Christmas training period we know there is a long way to go and a lot of training to be done (after the hangovers clear!).
However, the results so far make us optimistic and strengthen our resolve to train even harder.
22nd Nov 2001