Fitz fire at Queens’ Ergs

Novice success for Fitz and Anglia on night of chaos at Queens’ Ergs

anglia ruskin Fitzwilliam College novice Queens' queens' ergs Rowing

Fitzwilliam’s novice men clamied the Queens’ Ergs title tonight in an event marred by technical cock-ups and confusion.

The competition, the second biggest indoor rowing event in the country with more than 1000 participants, pits the novice crews against each other in Queens’ college gym.

Fitz took the title with an average 500m split of 1 minute 31 seconds, just ahead of a strong Churchill team boasting the event’s fastest rower Matt Warner who pulled an incredible 1 minute 23 second time in the final having gone even faster in the heats.

In the women’s division Anglia Ruskin won for the second year in a row with an average split of 1 minute 51 seconds, followed by Catz and St John’s.

The Lower Boats division was won by Clare’s men and Anglia Ruskin’s women.

 

Anglia Ruskin's novice women celebrate their victory

 

‘Chaos’

The event was marred however by techinical problems, as the big-screen showing the progress of the different crews crashed.

This meant that for all the finals none of the teams taking part knew how well they were doing until well after the end of each race.

The announcer Charlie Bell was left hopelessly in the dark. After the women’s Lower Boats final he told the participants that ‘I cannot yet reveal the winner’.

During the other finals he was left to guess which teams were winning on the basis of whom the marshalls thought were doing well.

Two marshalls wearing Queens’ Ergs t-shirts admitted that ‘he’s making it all up. He hasn’t got a clue whats going on. Its not his fault becuase the computer system has gone bust – it won’t tell us the results until the end’.

In the end the participants and the noisy Queens’ crowd waited fifteen minutes whilst the organisers manually added up the scores before announcing the night’s winners.

One Lower Boats captain described the organisation as ‘Chaos. But quite good natured chaos all the same!’

Pippa Howell, the Lower Boats captain at St John’s, was more scathing: ‘These guys honestly couldnt organise a pissup in a brewery’.