Queens’ Rule River

Queens’ today pulled off a shock victory in Winter Head to cement thier place among the favourites for Fairbairns.

In windy conditions Queens’, who finished last year’s Fairbairns cup in 27th place almost a minute slower than the winners, rowed the course in a time of 8 minutes 25 seconds. Downing and Trinity were the next two men’s college eights.

Many were impressed by Queens’ strong performance in University Fours, in which they won both men’s divisions, but few expected a club who finished 13th in Lent Bumps last year to be among the challengers for Fairbairns by the end of term.

Michael Clark, who rows in the Queens’ eight, told The Tab that he thought the prospects for Fairbairns were “very promising”. He said “we’ve definitely got the power and fitness to be one of the top college boats”.

In the women’s division Christ’s narrowly beat Trinity, just ahead of Emma and Clare.

‘Disappointing’

In the hours after the event however there was criticism of the organisers, the town-club Cantabrigian Rowing Club.

Despite the last division finishing in the early afternoon, the results were not posted until nearly 9 o’clock to the dismay of many participants.

On the discussion forum on the Cantabs website one rower described the delay as “a bit disappointing“. He said “Given the cost of this race the least one can expect is to get the results pretty quickly. The last race ended five hours ago”.

Another numerically gifted boatie did nothing to dispell the nerdy perception of rowers by calculating the total number of hours waited by those on the forum: “111 guests (at time of writing) * 2.5 hours = 277.5 hours of waiting. That’s a lot of waiting”.