The clue is in the title - this has certainly been one of Roehampton University Rowing Club's busiest weeks EVER! The first big news of the week came in the form of Men's Squad member Jeppe Fensholt approaching us about the possibility of his dad's company becoming our new sponsor. We obviously thought long and hard about this (not too long though!) and graciously accepted. As such we are pleased to announce that our new sponsor for the coming season will be Murmester Fensholt & Sons A/S of Oslo, Norway. They kindly donated £600 to add to the money from our massively successful London to Brighton bike ride fundraiser, thus allowing us to purchase our new 1987 Empacher VIII from our neighbours Quintin Boat Club! That means that overall our fundraising efforts raised not only the £2000 needed to buy the boat, but we still have a good amount of money left over to hopefully purchase a CoxBox. What an achievement! We collected our new boat on Friday morning, and used it for a short session with our newly painted oars before using them both in anger for the first time at Saturday's Head of the River, but more on that later! The VIII has been coded as ROE018 in recognition of the 18 people who started and completed the bike ride, and has been named THE BEACON after the famously steep hill just before Brighton on the ride's route. We'll be sure to add some close up shots of the boat later this week, but for the meantime try and spot it in our HORR pictures below! Massive thanks again to everyone that donated to our fundraiser, our new sponsor, and also Mark Chatwin and Alex Page at Quintin for helping us out with the purchase.
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| A sticker carrying this logo will be added to THE BEACON very soon as part of our new sponsorship arrangement |
Not content with purchasing one new boat last week, R.U.R.C also had a hand in purchasing another. Men's Captain Sam Neal, Treasurer/Fundraiser Diana Lava and Hannu Hara have chipped in together, with a contribution from Sport Roehampton, to purchase a single scull. The idea being the 3 private owners can use it at their leisure for their own training whilst it can be used by other club members at R.U.R.C sessions. We think this will be massively useful going forward. The boat is a 10(?) year old Burgashell Super Carbon purchased from Monmouth Rowing Club in Wales. It was kindly delivered to us on Saturday as Monmouth too were competing this weekend, and was rowed back to TTRC by Club Captain Sam Sears, who had an amazing time in it apparently! The boat has been given the ID ROE101, and has yet to be named. Check out below for a pic of the new boat, and also a pic of the Croker oars which came with it.
R.U.R.C's new single!
Wednesday night saw our latest social, this one being 'ROCK' themed - think KISS, Black Sabbath etc. Safe to say, as always with R.U.R.C the night was not only brilliantly attended but also massively enjoyable. Thanks again to Rachel Esker and Sam Kirby for being so dedicated to getting our rowers drunken and disorderly! Think the below photo sums up the evening nicely!
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| Amy, Rachel and Sarah at last week's 'ROCK' social. |
And so onto the weekend, and the biggest race of the head season - HEAD OF THE RIVER. Roehampton University Rowing Club entered 2 crews into this years event, which is a massive achievement in itself when last year we were struggling to put together 1! The boys in both crews did us proud, and despite a few set-backs in the preceding week, each crew put in a performance we are all happy with. Our 1st VIII came home 381st overall, 54th out of 64 in their category, in a time of 22:03 which despite worse conditions was quicker than last year! Our 2nd VIII came 394th overall in a time of 24:04 which is comparable to last years crew, and in itself is a massive achievement. See below for a few selected pictures of the boys.
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| Men's 2nd VIII - Toby Ballentyne, Antonis Mavrommattis, Mike Benson, Diana Lava (Cox), Ryan Livingstone, Tom Sykes-Brown, Reece Pawsey and Ben Thompson. (Matt Dodd not pictured) |
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| Both crews! |
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| Men's 1st VIII - Sam Neal, Jeppe Fensholt, Jan Erik Haavik, Sam Sears, Amy Austen (Cox), Richard Swoboda, Mike Bretton, David Bedford and Hannu Hara |
