A crew from Oundle School Boat Club has been successful in qualifying for the Henley Royal Regatta this year.
Senior Boys’ Rowing Coach, Neville Aston, commented, “The Senior Boys Quad scull has pre-qualified following some excellent results at Marlow Regatta on 16 June. This is the first Oundle crew to qualify for HRR since 2004 and to be pre-selected for the event is an outstanding achievement.”
The crew comprises of Upper Sixth formers, Evan Bolle-Jones (18), James Robson (17), Angus Irvine (17) and Chris Waring (18), who are all part of the Oundle Navy CCF rowing group which began last autumn.
For James Robson this is an outstanding achievement as he only began rowing this year, the other 3 have all rowed since Third Form (Year 9.)
The boys have qualified for the Fawley Challenge Cup, an event for school/junior boys in quad sculls. Entries this year are from all across the world including entries from Ireland, Australia and the US.
Run on a side-by- side knock out basis there are 24 crews in this event, 16 crews will race on the Wednesday (27 June) and the other 8 get a bye through to the Thursday (the latter will normally include any seeded crews that are selected).
The qualifying process is such that as nearly all events for HRR are oversubscribed and consequently the stewards of this event look at results from other high class events throughout the current season and from these events, they select crews which have had consistently high results and put these crews directly into the event – which is the route the Oundle boys have been given. The remaining crews that enter each event then have to race in a time trial on the Friday preceeding the event for the remaining places.
During this season the boys have been racing at quality events, preparing them for HRR. They made the finals at Wallingford Regatta, Nottingham City Regatta and were 2nd at Peterborough Regatta by a mere 3ft. They ‘misfired’ at the National Schools, not making it to the final which was a little disappointing, but they then followed this with an excellent result at Marlow Regatta, finishing an overall 6th out of 23 entries beating crews from Eton College, Windsor Boys, Bedford Modern School, Wycliffe College and Leander Club.
Additional information can also be found here at: http://www.hrr.co.uk/.