Update – February 2017

Each year BUCS head takes place on the River Tyne in Newcastle with both novice and intermediate crews taking part. Due to Storms Doris and Ewan, BUCS officials cancelled the event for novice crews on the Saturday. However, the novices travelled to Newcastle to support the inter crews, showing great club spirit! Sunday saw a fantastic day’s racing with the Ladies Intermediate 8+ placing 5^th, a mere 3 seconds off a medal. The afternoon saw the Men’s Intermediate 8+ come home 9^th, also an impressive result. Additionally, the men’s lwt4- placed 5^th in a Championship category and the ladies’ inter fours placed 6^th and 17^th. The ladies’ inter 4x- placed 9^th in a very competitive race.

We hope to carry this momentum into the weekend with Erne HORR on Saturday 4^th March. Between the clubs, there will be a big Queen’s presence, with 73 athletes competing. We are also looking forward to Lagan Head on the 18^th March and onwards.

On the 18^th February, members of both clubs competed in The Lagan Scullers Head against 156 other crews. Congratulations to Philip Doyle for recording the fastest time in Race 1 (12.10.4) to win Men’s Senior 1x. The women’s senior quad completed race 3 in a time of 13.09.7, cementing themselves as the fastest women’s crew of the day. Congratulations to Emily Romeril, Samantha Gallaher, Francesca Morelli, and Ella Brogan for a fantastic result!

At the Rowing Ireland trials in Cork on 23^rd February, Chris Beck finished 3^rd with a time of 23:49 not far behind Olympic medallists Paul and Gary O’Donovan. Encouraging results also came from Sam McKeown and Miles Taylor, both of whom have been invited to the March Trial along with Chris and Tiernan Oliver, who sat out the last trial due to injury.

These promising early season results bode well for the upcoming regatta season. Our intermediate and senior athletes are travelling to Banyoles for our Easter training camp with club development officer Trevor McKnight, an upgrade from rainy Leitrim! This 8-day camp is planned with BUCS regatta in mind where we hope to turn promising early season results into regatta speed.

Our novices will have their own training camp at the National Rowing Centre in Cork where, they have been promised, it never rains!

For those of you who do not contribute in other ways, we would ask that you consider making a small donation to assist with the fundraising to enable the transport of our boats to Banyoles.  We have set up a crowd funding page at https://www.gofundme.com/queens-rowing-banyoles-2017.

The Lady Victoria Winter Dinner was held at the Crowne Plaza Hotel on the 3^rd February and was attended by a large contingent of current rowers.  The night was a terrific success and in particular over £1500 was raised by LVBC to help with Queens Rowing.  The guest speaker was Neil Weir who formerly rowed for Queens and now works in the Estates Department of QUB.  His tales of endurance running in extreme conditions and his successes in that regard were a particular inspiration to all the athletes present who will doubtless have gained inspiration to help on those cold winter mornings when the alarm goes off at 5.45am!

We wish to thank everyone for your continued support. We couldn’t have achieved so much already without the help of all those involved in Queen’s Rowing.

Yours in Rowing,

Laura Potts and Bilal Korimbocus