boaty boaty boaty

Aren't they building a big lake thingy i saw somewhere. Must admit it sounds attractive but thinking that the coffee, radio 4, novel idea sounds much more... comfortable.

Reply 62

They've just finished building a 2,000m 6 lane lake at Dorney, near Wallingford. The World Championships will be hosted there next year, as will the Olympic rowing in 2012 :biggrin:

Reply 63

Simone de Beauv

Here's a question not really related to rowing (but a bit of a link with the whole "sports" subject). I'm not really much of a sporty person, I'd be more of the arty, drama type. However...back in my school days (back in the day)I used to fence (did it for about 5 years) at a high competition level throughout the UK, and recently was thinking about giving it another go, but was just wondering if you can kind of "restart" a sport at cambridge if you havnt been doing it at all in the last few years?? :confused:

Reply 64

KupoIncarnate

Simone de Beauv

Here's a question not really related to rowing (but a bit of a link with the whole "sports" subject). I'm not really much of a sporty person, I'd be more of the arty, drama type. However...back in my school days (back in the day)I used to fence (did it for about 5 years) at a high competition level throughout the UK, and recently was thinking about giving it another go, but was just wondering if you can kind of "restart" a sport at cambridge if you havnt been doing it at all in the last few years?? :confused:

Nearly every sports club in cambridge will be trying to trap feshers at the freshers fair so theres no doubt that you dont need to be experienced at a sport to take it up in Cambridge. If your question was more "well I'm sorta good but not really good, can I still integrate?" then I guess you might have to either spend a while with totally rubbish newbies or go in at the deep end with some of the more experienced members... it all depends on the sports club. I took kendo in my first term (until rowing got too committed so I had to drop it), and they were accepting new members of all previous experience levels.

Reply 65

Narcissus

H&E

They've just finished building a 2,000m 6 lane lake at Dorney, near Wallingford. The World Championships will be hosted there next year, as will the Olympic rowing in 2012 :biggrin:

I was at the World Cup earlier in the summer, it was fun...Though Redgrave looked absolutely knackered...Took some great shots of them though!

Reply 66

Simone de Beauv

KupoIncarnate

Nearly every sports club in cambridge will be trying to trap feshers at the freshers fair so theres no doubt that you dont need to be experienced at a sport to take it up in Cambridge. If your question was more "well I'm sorta good but not really good, can I still integrate?" then I guess you might have to either spend a while with totally rubbish newbies or go in at the deep end with some of the more experienced members... it all depends on the sports club. I took kendo in my first term (until rowing got too committed so I had to drop it), and they were accepting new members of all previous experience levels.

ahhh thanks dude

Reply 67

H&E

They've just finished building a 2,000m 6 lane lake at Dorney, near Wallingford. The World Championships will be hosted there next year, as will the Olympic rowing in 2012 :biggrin:

and supposedly it was supposed to be built in a sheltered area, yet when i was rowing on it it was windy as hell! In fact for our final race without exaggeration we didn't have the boat pointed straight down the course, it had to be at an angle for most of the race

Reply 68

Rowing lakes are by defintion windy, no matter what their design specs. The Athens one hosted the Junior WC's in 2003 and they had at least three sinkings, mass race cancellations and ended up racing finals 8 abreast at 6am over 1,000m. The Nottingham course is always notorious for wind, every year crews in lanes 1 or 6 will do massively better than expected. Apparently in 1987 the (proper) WC's were held at Nottingham under conditions similar to Athens 2003, almost unrowable.
Dorney's got a fairly good rep with wind tbh, remember it's a very new facility so trees won't have grown yet! I've rowed there a couple of times and it's been very good.

Freak wind conditions can happen anywhere tbh. In 1992 there was a section of HRR which was just about unrowable, I'm told.

What comp were you racing in at Dorney?

EDIT: I think that post showed slightly excessive rowing knowledge :redface:

Reply 69

H&E

Rowing lakes are by defintion windy, no matter what their design specs. The Athens one hosted the Junior WC's in 2003 and they had at least three sinkings, mass race cancellations and ended up racing finals 8 abreast at 6am over 1,000m. The Nottingham course is always notorious for wind, every year crews in lanes 1 or 6 will do massively better than expected. Apparently in 1987 the (proper) WC's were held at Nottingham under conditions similar to Athens 2003, almost unrowable.
Dorney's got a fairly good rep with wind tbh, remember it's a very new facility so trees won't have grown yet! I've rowed there a couple of times and it's been very good.

Freak wind conditions can happen anywhere tbh. In 1992 there was a section of HRR which was just about unrowable, I'm told.

What comp were you racing in at Dorney?

EDIT: I think that post showed slightly excessive rowing knowledge :redface:

Yeah but the lake in nottingham is notorious in rowing circles for having been incredibly badly designed!

I can't quite remember what it was called, but I remember it was the weekend of June the 4th.

Which boat do you row with then? I wish oxford colleges entered more of the regattas and races which we entered during the year, I only ever saw a couple about, and I dont think they entered our categories.

Reply 70

I don't really row at Oxford. I rowed for St Paul's School, though, and we'd go up to Dorney then.

Nottingham is terribly designed in that it's a combined rowing course and windsurfing course...

EDIT: And yes, Oxford college should enter more races. Oriel ONLY raced bumps this Summer Eights, where they rowed over every day. But it's tough - the good crews will have people with exams, university/international commitments. The smaller boat clubs either don't have the money, or the will to compete and be taken to the cleaners by schoolboys, which is what will happen if anything but the best college crews raced externally.

Reply 71

H&E

I don't really row at Oxford. I rowed for St Paul's School, though, and we'd go up to Dorney then.

Nottingham is terribly designed in that it's a combined rowing course and windsurfing course...

EDIT: And yes, Oxford college should enter more races. Oriel ONLY raced bumps this Summer Eights, where they rowed over every day. But it's tough - the good crews will have people with exams, university/international commitments. The smaller boat clubs either don't have the money, or the will to compete and be taken to the cleaners by schoolboys, which is what will happen if anything but the best college crews raced externally.

But that's not what going to regattas is all about! We sucked when we entered regattas, our greatest achievement was 3rd in novice 4's (which wasn't bad for a bunch of this year's novices). You go to regattas regardless of whether or not you get whipped by 14 year olds. Heck, I was rowing in that regatta on dorney lake the day before my computing exam!
Anyhows, you must have an idea of what type of time some oxford colleges do on 2k courses?

Reply 72

Fraid not. I'm just not aware of any that have gone this year. Magdalen tried to qualify for HRR, but failed, probably in no small part due to the absence of their strokeman/talisman/double Isis/double Blue/U23 international.

In 2004 LMH had an awesome year apparently, contain 3/4 Blues trialists in some capacity, a couple of schoolboy rowers, and some huge novices, and they came top 100 in HORR and qualified for Temple at HRR. I'd guess in decent conditions that crew would be doing 6:20-30 over 2k, with enough wind even lower (you'd be amazed how much wind can do - Radley went sub 6 in one of the first 2k races of the season in 2001, co-incidentally with that same Magdalen stroke in their boat). But that's a freak crew - most years would be considerably slower.

Reply 73

H&E

Fraid not. I'm just not aware of any that have gone this year. Magdalen tried to qualify for HRR, but failed, probably in no small part due to the absence of their strokeman/talisman/double Isis/double Blue/U23 international.

In 2004 LMH had an awesome year apparently, contain 3/4 Blues trialists in some capacity, a couple of schoolboy rowers, and some huge novices, and they came top 100 in HORR and qualified for Temple at HRR. I'd guess in decent conditions that crew would be doing 6:20-30 over 2k, with enough wind even lower (you'd be amazed how much wind can do - Radley went sub 6 in one of the first 2k races of the season in 2001, co-incidentally with that same Magdalen stroke in their boat). But that's a freak crew - most years would be considerably slower.

Hmmm, well I'd hope they can do better than that. We managed 6:21 in disappointing conditions on dorney lake (followed that afternoon with 6:37...but that was the race where we had the have the boat at an angle all the way down the course). And keeping in mind that we were pretty crap for a first men's crew (around about 12th best i'd say). Well, we just wont know until like you said they have a big competition with oxford colleges vs cambridge colleges. I would really like to have a row in something like that though!

Reply 74