May Bumps: Women’s Review

As May Week continues, The Tab looks back on a short and sharp four days of bumping and near misses that concluded with Pembroke W1 maintaining their untouchable position of Head of the River.

Nonetheless, Downing W1 made quite a concerted effort to gain Headship. Overbumping Jesus W1 on the first day was quite an epic (and rare for the 1st division) achievement, jumping from 5th to 2nd place in a mere few strokes. Now set up to take a crack at the Pembroke machine, Downing disappointingly failed over 3 days to bump the Headship crew. Despite the unfortunate result (because, let’s face it, we all want to see Pembroke W1 fail at something, we all like a bit of schadenfreude) Downing look set to be tough competition next year. Better luck next time girls.

Strong performances were shown by Christ’s W1 earning blades, and with Tit Hall, Newnham and Catz working their way upwards.

Jesus W2, as predicted, failed to maintain their spot as the only W2 crew in the 1st division, losing their position to King’s W1. An embarrassing result considering King’s failed to catch even Churchill on the way down. Pembroke W2 also failed to make progress in the W1 division having moved up the 2nd division to sandwich boat.

However, despite being knocked out of the 1st division, Jesus W2 surprised Selwyn W1 by rowing over on Friday and only being bumped on Saturday at the Railway Bridge under ‘dubious’ circumstances. Reports indicate that the umpires were left having to deal with an ‘agitated German’ disputing the Selwyn ‘bump’. A decision was made even harder to make when, according to onlookers, it looked like the bow of Selwyn W1 caught a crab close to bumping. Possibly something to avoid doing in the future.

Further down in the second division, Emma W2 continued their standard blades quest despite their stroke catching a crab off the start at one point. Can someone please bump them next time? Newnham W2 also put out a strong performance, bumping up to the second division.