Thursday opened with a treat for early risers, the sight of Olympic lightweight champion Imogen Grant under Upper Thames colours racing Ukrainian Kateryna Maistrenko in the Princess Royal women’s singles at 9am. Maistrenko represented her country as a junior and then under-23 openweight a few years ago, but Grant is one of the best technical scullers in the world and it was no surprise to see her at a 5.5-length advantage by the time she reached Fawley. It was a busy 12 hours for her as she rowed at seven for Cambridge’s Bridge crew in the last race of the day at 6:50pm, a rare case of someone rowing for two different clubs at the regatta, but another easy win as the Light Blues readily demolished Oxford Brookes B by nearly 4 lengths. In between Grant, who finished her medical degree before the Olympics, worked a full 10am-5pm shift as a doctor at Wrexham Park Hospital in Slough, 18 miles away.
The Bridge Challenge Plate is an entirely new event for elite but sub-international women’s eights, the latest in the series which is moving towards gender parity, and effectively the equivalent of the Ladies’ Plate for men. The next much-anticipated move will be inserting an event for women’s quads which fills the gap between the Diamond Jubilee JW4x and the international-standard Princess Grace W4x, but it may be difficult since many clubs are keen not to lose the popular Britannia (club) and Prince Albert (student) coxed fours.
Meanwhile there was a big cheer for Marlow going out to face Leander in the inaugural Bridge race on Thursday morning which was won by Marlow by just half a length after a major tussle of wills the entire way up the course. Marlow lost their mojo briefly at the milepost, giving Leander a slim opportunity, but recovered in time to clinch victory.
Former lightweight Finn Hamill (NZL) had to contest with an errant goose while sculling to a narrow but low-rating win over Coupe medallist Herbie Austin-Baker, who has been taking a gap year in New Zealand. Hamill clipped the bird as their Diamonds race swept past the Enclosures, sending it flying directly past Austin-Baker, narrowly evading his sculls, after which it bounced from the water onto a nearby boom to recover its wits. Hamill had been relaxing at rate 28 so there was no effect on the race. The two single scullers were also in the Doubles draw, Hamill getting a bye to Friday with his regular Kiwi team doubles partner Ben Mason, and Austin-Baker racing with former Windsor Boys’ Fawley champion Jimmy Harlow, beaten by a Okeanos/Fontainebleu composite on Thursday morning.
The favoured scullers in the high-quality Diamonds entry largely had uneventful wins, Paris Olympic champion Olli Zeidler (GER) celebrating his comeback to competition with a clean ‘easily’ win over City of Cambridge qualifier Ed Gardiner, while 2021 Olympic champion Stefanos Ntouskos (GRE), Melvin Twellaar (NED) and Ryuto Arakawa (JPN) survived quick starts from Alex Wolf (AUS), Eliot Putnam (USA) and Tom Wilkinson (Greenbank Falmouth) respectively.
Simon van Dorp, the Dutch sculler who has beaten Zeidler internationally in the past, had a tougher job against lightweight Ben Parsonage from Clydesdale, Parsonage bursting off the start as if the devil was chasing him. Van Dorp kept his head and let his superior weight and power take him through, while Parsonage was out of energy at the end, after giving it his all. Van Dorp is most likely to be seeing Zeidler in the semi-final, which is a shame since he is the sculler on form and this may turn out to be the real final.
Whilst the junior eights had a day off, the Temple and Island student eights continued to narrow the field, Harvard’s undefeated lightweights earning themselves a quarter-finals spot against national club champions University of Virginia by defeating Dutchmen Aegir by clear water. The excellent crew is performing with class, despite having to make a substitution last-minute after one of the Crimson eight decided it would be unwise, as a foreign student, to leave the US even for a short trip. Information has been spreading since April about international students in the US being stopped from returning after visits home, on the slenderest of pretexts thrown up by America’s Immigration and Customs Enforcement ICE team.
Add to that increasing rumours about British students with US rowing scholarships sanitising their social feeds, and the suggestion that at least one such rower has already been denied a visa, and the full-ride scholarships of the last 20 years are starting to look a lot less appetising. Back to the rowing, and University of Bristol’s women’s eight had a great start in the Island Challenge Cup leading out Princeton’s almost intact and undefeated lightweight crew to the Barrier, before the Tigers ground them down and went through.
That wasn’t the end of it, Bristol fighting back brilliantly and almost levelling the race before a steering wiggle let Princeton confirm the win. The battle earned the approval of umpire Sir Matthew Pinsent, who congratulated both crews afterwards, and woke up the post-tea grandstands beautifully. Other universities had mixed fortunes, Durham University winning with their women’s crew but their men losing to a Cambridge eight made up mostly of Goldie rowers from the victorious crew which beat Isis in April.
The one school sweep crew in action, St Edwards’ second eight, covered themselves in glory beating university students Asopos de Vliet from the Netherlands to become the first UK school crew in at least 26 years — and possibly ever — to reach the Friday of Henley in the Temple which is usually crammed with older, stronger rowers. They consistently under-rated Asopos but outrowed them to win by a length, and left former Master in Charge of Rowing, John Wiggins, virtually in tears at their astounding achievement.
There was a similarly good race from the Bonner & Erster men’s quad (GER) in the Prince of Wales Challenge Cup, racing Nereus & Okeanos (NED). The Dutch didn’t know when they were beaten and came charging back even though the Germans took at length by Remenham, closing right up to a three-foot verdict with Bonner gasping with relief at the line. There was another breathless result for Claires Court Fawley JM4x, who hung on to defeat Maidenhead by a third of a length, while their Diamond Jubilee JW4x rowing back from a disadvantage to beat Canberra by more than two lengths.
There was also a magnificent performance from the Hartpury junior men’s quad, who stalked their way back from a full length deficit at the Barrier to level before the Enclosures. They then stormed past a demoralised Marist quad (another Canberra crew) to win convincingly. And in the largely uneventful Visitors coxless fours there was a big win for Munster, a German entry full of ambitious national team hopefuls, who rowed their way past a solid Princeton undergraduate quartet with plenty of experience, to win by the rare margin of a quarter of a length.
The last but two race of Thursday was a corker, a Stonor women’s doubles heat featuring Olympic champion and Henley legend Emma Twigg (NZL) back in a boat, this time with young lightweight rising star Grace Sypher from Australia. They drew defending champion Lisa Gutfleisch, a still active and recently very successful international rower, but unusually rowing with a Swiss friend, Sofia Meakin, a 2024 Olympic spare. At first it looked as if Gutfleisch and Meakin would walk away with the race, their start and settle outdoing the Antipodeans. But Twigg and Sypher kept their cool, maintained a solid rate 36, higher than their rivals, and eroded the German lead stroke by stroke.
A particularly effective push of power rather than rate after the Barrier took them from clear water down to a mere canvas behind at Remenham, and the Kiwi/Aussie combination could not be denied after that, passing the Europeans and rowing away to claim victory by open water. For Twigg, elected a Steward last year, a highly effective way to get out of boat-tent stewarding duties, but they now meet the GB double of Freya Keto and Vwaire Obukohwo, who reached the A-final at the Europeans. Much as it may look as if Twigg and Sypher are underpowered, it’s starting to look as if they could cause a lot of damage to the Stonor draw.
