11th October 2008

Twickenham had two crews entered in this year’s Pairs’ Head.

Christine Palmer and Gemma Taylor raced Women’s Senior 3 pairs finishing a very respectable 5th from 13 crews. Spike and Robert Bailey won the Vet E 2x category and Robert provides a race report below:

The day was warm and calm and the athletes had worked up in the last Handiknapp Sculls and had a race plan. On the ‘go’ they spun the rating up to 33 for a minute and then settled it at 30. Through Barnes Bridge Spike then called for more ratio and the rating settled at 29 with some periods of magic as the ‘place and squeeze’ stroke profile worked, the boat was balanced and we drew further away from the Vet E pursuers. The W S3 crews we had to overtake presented more difficulty as not all moved aside without some verbal nudging from Spike. Approaching the finish we temporarily slowed to avoid ‘bumping’, then spun it up to 34 to complete the last 50 strokes. It felt a good race, however we couldn’t judge the distances of some of our pursuers. In the event we were 14 secs ahead of the rest of the Vet Es.