X-Press Boat Club

June brought some great results for X-Press rowers.

On Saturday the 13th June One Four All beat Kent University at Bedford Star Regatta, in the final of the novice coxed fours, after curtailing Kent's endeavours to hold the lead for the first third of the race. The conditions were fabulous and Star very welcoming in a relaxed and well organised event.

Coxed by Roy Cooper; S Rachel Anderson; 3 Emily Rodgers; 2 Maria O'Callaghan; 1 Sarah Cooper.

And on Sunday, XP2 won gold medals in the Novice Vet C 8+ category at the ARA National Vets regatta in Nottingham.

The crew were certainly helped by an automatic bye into the 4-crew final… and then by one of the other crews not turning up, but they still powered away from (their nemesis CRA crew to that date) Champs RC, and Tees RC right from the start to win by three quarters of a length.

Two years ago the core of this crew formed Scrambled X, and their previous high was rowing over in the Town Bumps that year, second from bottom of the river, narrowly holding off a 'charging' Vet G crew on the Reach.  Since then the combination of Allan Fowlie's organising and John Dent's coaching has worked absolute wonders. Thank you to them, to super-calm cox Alex for an arrow-straight line, to Adrian Cooke for coaching on the day and to Roy and Joe for subbing in and for bringing a bit of class to proceedings.

Cox Alex Booth; S Roy Cooper; 7 Jeremy Proctor; 6 Roger Thornton; 5 Allan Fowlie; 4 Andrew Miers; 3 Marcus Taylor; 2 David Traynor; B Joe Oldak.

Sue Brown brought back a stack of medals from the National Vets too, as she is prone to do! In her own words:

• Gold WC1x - nice to have nailed that one again.
• Gold WC8 - great race against our arch rivals, UK gold.
• Gold WC4X - gutsy row at end of long day's racing.
• Silver WC2X - first race for this combination... watch this space!