Press Officer Team Kimberley reports on a wonderful weekend in Boston...
If there’s one place a rower never wants to be around October 20th each year, it’s Boston (if it were the Boston, Massachusetts you were thinking of that would be great but it’s the one in Lincolnshire...). Unfortunately, in order to proceed to the next set of national trials, athletes must first take part in the joys of a 2k test, in a so-called ‘leisure centre’ with a 5000m time trial in the single the following day in inevitably awful conditions. On top of this is the prospect of up to two more 5k time trials in doubles and pairs for the BUCS small boats head. With this in mind, an illness-depleted ICBC squad headed up to Boston to give it their all.
The weekend started reasonably well for all as the heavyweight ladies started the show. IC had only three representatives here in the shape of new recruits, Michelle Vezie, Helen Wood and Eazy mother*ckin’ E (aka Lizzie Cottrell). They were swiftly followed by the heavyweight men, where IC had considerably more representatives, all of whom either snuck under the 6:20 U23 ergo cut off or totally smashed it. First up was the general, Pierre Thomas; the Frenchman banged out a solid 6:18. He was followed by Ben Spencer Jones (6:11), Cad the lad Jack Cadman (6:13) who took the Team Kimberley racing approach of going hard for 2 minutes and then going home. One of the performances of the day came from ex-captain Danny Bellion, who pulled a personal best of 6:15. Hal Bradbury smashed out a 6:19 while Simon Steele brought up the rear, only half a second behind.
Up next were the lightweights. In the women’s squad Chloe Symmonds, Laura Greenhalgh and Rosa Atkinson all put in good performances pulling 7:37, 7:13 and 7:22 respectively with Laura’s time being the second fastest of all lightweight women. In the men’s squad, the big dog Jamie Kirkwood pulled 6:25, taking 2 seconds of his pb and less than a second behind Team Kimberley (6:24). Matthew Monteith put in a grand performance to pull 6:28 closely followed by Cap’n Paddy Hudson & Tim Richards (6:31) and Tom Pearson (6:32). Paul Jones also did well to pull 6:38, under the u23 cut-off and another pb!
After a banging dinner at the local Weatherspoons, Sunday rolled on. As usual, conditions were perfect bar the 24mph head wind. First off were the heavyweights. Jack Cadman was clearly unfazed by the screaming wind, finishing 14th overall (6th U23). Clearly Team Kimberley’s presence is having a positive influence on him in light of this amazing result. Cad the Lad was also heard saying “Dun noe bruv he does it himself” in his sleep further supporting prior statement. Good performances were also put in by Simon Steele (37th overall, 17th U23) followed closely by Hal Bradbury (39th, 19th U23) and Leo Carrington (43rd, 22nd U23). The general, Pierre Thomas chose the manly low-rate tactic rating 24 down the whole course. In spite of the he still managed a credible 46th overall and 25th U23. A little further back was tough guy and expert single sculler Ben Spencer-Jones (57th, 30th U23). Last but not least of IC’s men’s heavyweight contingent was Danny Bellion (70th, 39th U23) whose massive ergo the day before came back to haunt him. Unfortunately, pride of ICBC Jack Bannenberg was not present to win trials this weekend but we are anticipating his performance at the next set of trials in December.
Of the heavyweight women, Michelle Vezie finished 8th closely followed by Helen Wood (10th) with Eazy-E blazing down the course at rating 22 and finishing 18th (8th U23).
The lightweights had to undergo the joys of weighing in before being allowed to race. Men must be 75kg or lighter and 61.5kg for women. For the vast majority this was little problem – for Kirkwood and Kimberley it was slightly more of a struggle, Kirkwood (350g over having opted for the large pizza option for dinner the previous night) and Kimberley (150g over in spite of large pre-weigh in dump) just being a general pie.
Photo Courtesy of Jamie Kirkwood
During racing, Kirkwood could be seen looking fly sporting kit officer Spencer-Jones latest idea of tartan leggings. His sweat down clearly had a negative effect on his performance as he finished only 3rd overall [God Jamie what were you playing at???? Just winnning Gold BUCS medals for Roehampton eh?]. Some 35 seconds behind was Team Kimberley (12th, 6th U23) with Tim Richards finishing 25th (14th U23). Tim’s love for nature cost him several precious seconds as he had a not-so-brief encounter with a tree during the race. Irishman Matthew Monteith was not far behind (28th, 17th U23) and Paddy Hudson finished 32nd. Tom Pearson and Paul Jones finished only 0.17 seconds apart to finish 39th (24th U23) and 40th (25th U23) respectively. Of the women, Laura Greenhalgh finished 2nd overall (again!) with Chloe Symmonds coming 16th (9th U23). Laura must have been able to take some consolation from beating the girl quicker than her on the ergo by the best part of a minute on the water.
After the singles, only BUCS races followed and IC was reinforced by the arrival of Louise Connell, Lily Beadle, Hannah Patterson & Cloudy Carnegie. However, the men’s double event was up first, in which IC had two entries. The duo of Hal Bradbury and Ben Spencer-Jones finished 3rd with Simon Steele and Danny Bellion finishing 9th. The women’s doubles came next with Cloudy Carnegie and Louise Connell finishing 5th and Hannah Patterson and Lily Beadle finishing 6th.
The final division of the day contained the lightweight doubles and heavyweight pairs races. Couper troopers Cloudy Carnegie and Hannah Patterson were reunited in their 2011 Coupe de la Jeunesse pair, winning the heavyweight women’s category comfortably.
Photo Courtesy of Jamie Kirkwood
Hoping to continue IC’s lightweight domination were the duo of Tim Richards and Tom Pearson. Although gutted to finish second by only three seconds, some consolation could be taken from no-one having ever heard of the winners (who the hell are Herriot-Watt anyway?) and giving nemesis Durham a good thrashing. The final race of the day saw the interesting combo of Team Kimberley and Hal Bradbury, the formers sweep ineptitude (sorry Hal!) being the cause of the loss of a rather large amount of time and finishing 9th.
A successful weekend saw IC walk away with 26 BUCS points and (hopefully!) some interest from the international selectors.