A busy final weekend of the head racing season saw the Senior Men travelling to London for the Head of the River Race on the Thames and the Juniors staying closer to home for Ponteland Junior Head on the Tyne on Saturday, March 22nd, while the Masters were also in London for the Vesta Masters Head on Sunday, March 23rd.
Head of the River Race
It was the fourth year in succession that DARC had entered the Head of the River Race (HoRR) for eights, the most prestigious race in the head calendar this year attracting 344 entries from across the UK and overseas to contest the iconic 6.8km Championship course
Represented by John Roxborough, James Gibson, Dan Lockey, Roger Dunn, Jonny Banwell, Dan Pearson, Darren Smith, Ollie Negus and Stef Lavelle (cox) the eight lined up for the 9.15am start with bow number 131. An outstanding performance saw the crew home in a time of 20.23.2 to take 40th position in the Jackson Trophy for provincial clubs not based on the Tideway, 86th Medium club and 184th place overall.
Winning entries for each pennant are listed here. and full results are available here and crew photos by AllMarkOne here.
The race video is on YouTube here.
Being a favourite of the rowing community in Durham the start order also included 4 entries from Durham University Boat Club (DUBC) plus the 1877 Club (for DUBC alumni), and 20 entries from 12 Durham University Colleges, with DARC finishing ahead of all but DUBC, Collingwood and Trevelyan Colleges.
Ponteland Head
Meanwhile the J14 Juniors had 4 entries at Ponteland Head, which attracted 93 entries racing in 3 divisions over 2.4km between Ryton and Stella on the Tyne, which being dependent on tide times generally takes place on the same day as one of the Tideway Heads. Falling a week after the Northern Junior Inter Regional Trials at Cambois it also served as an indicator towards likely team selection for next month’s Junior Inter Regional Regatta at Nottingham. Having already secured trials victories in J14 4x+, WJ14 2x (with Lambton), WJ15 4x+ and J16 1x, wins at Ponteland went to the J14 4x+ (10.03.0) and WJ14 4x+ (11.02.6), while the J14 girls 2x was second and the J14 boys 2x fifth.
Results can be found on the Tyne ARC website and Oar-Online here.
Vesta Masters Head
On Sunday DARC’s sole entry for the Vesta Masters Head was in the Durham/Tyne ARC/Hexham composite Masters E coxless quad that included Michael Terry representing Durham ARC. The crew extended their run of victories at Rutherford Head, Tyne United and Durham to take victory by 20 seconds in an impressive 21.16.28, ahead of Oxford, Tideway Scullers and Marlow.
240 crews in Open, Women’s and Mixed eights and quads took part, contesting 23 pennants over the same course as the HoRR. Sadly the day was marred by a serious incident in which a competitor required medical attention and later died in hospital. This also meant a pause in crews starting the race, and when racing was able to resume there was insufficient time to complete the race before the end of the scheduled river closure, which caused the abandonment of racing with several crews getting no result. Preparations for some crews had already been disrupted by the closure of Heathrow Airport two days previously.
Results of the Masters Head are here. Crew photos by AllMarkOne are available here.
With winter head racing now over we can focus on the summer regatta season. The JIRR takes place on the multi-lane course at Nottingham on April 26th and the first home fixture on the River Wear is Durham City Regatta on May 10th and 11th.