On Saturday 17 August the NMMU Men’s and Women’s 1st Eight Rowing Teams squared up on the Swartkops river in the 2013 tri-varsity championships.
A near gale in the city of Port Elizabeth failed to reach the village of Redhouse but the rowers were still presented with challenging conditions.
The women’s teams rowed over 4 kilometres and the men’s over 5.5 kilometres with both races starting on the Uitenhage side of Redhouse and finishing just past the last jetty of the Redhouse Village.
Both races featured a timed rolling start with the NMMU teams starting first and the Rhodes teams playing ‘catch-up’.
In the women’s race it was pretty much a one horse race with Rhodes catching up to the NMMU team before hitting Redhouse and then powering away for the win.
The NMMU men, smarting from a 40 second beating by Rhodes in the two teams last encounter had a point to prove over their rivals. Rhodes were given a 20 second gap to catch up and for the first third of the course it looked like the men from Grahamstown were going to catch the Port Elizabeth based NMMU. Within sight of Redhouse Village the NMMU rowers found their rhythym and pulled away slightly in the long straight before turning for the finish.
Rhodes steered the better line to take them down the straight in front of the village but NMMU held on desperately for the finish. A momentary hiccup from the crew saw them having to row just a bit further than they thought that they had to.
The finish was close – desperately so – my mental arithmetic had Rhodes the winners at around a second but we had to wait for the official results which showed Rhodes winning by just 0.85 seconds over the punishing 5.5 kilometre course – a marvelous confidence booster ahead of their next clash at Varsities Boat Race and a far better result than the previous NMMU loss to Rhodes by 40 seconds but still a hammer blow in the ‘what if’ stakes.
The NMMU Men’s 1st Eight team:
1 – Dylan Rishworth, 2 – Michael Collier, 3 – Christopher Osmond, 4 – Grant Richards, 5 – Blake Atherton, 6 – Benji Ekron, 7 – Michael Persse, 8 – Philip Straton and Cox – Mathew Macpahil.
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Alan Straton
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