History made at Women's Head of the River Race

The Womens' Squads made their way down to London this past weekend for the Women's Head of the River Race! Rowing on the Tideway is always a highlight of our season at UStABC and the club was well represented, selecting two crews of the best of our Senior and Novice Women respectively.

Despite a good performance last year, with the Senior Women ranking 101st and the Novices placing 240th overall, this year our goal was even higher and the club is immensely proud of what we achieved.

The Senior Women placed 56th after a start position of 209th - the best in the club's history of racing at WeHorr. Our Novice Women's crew also made a new record, moving from a starting position of 307th to 206th overall, making our overall placements in our individual categories 7/53 for Intermediate University and 23/60 for Novice Academic. This result really shows the impact of not only our new indoor training programme, but our highly successful training camp in Italy over the Winter break, where our squads got to achieve a high volume of high intensity sessions at ideal facilities.

Despite the relatively mild temperatures down in London, there were some light winds throughout the course, yet our women are more than used to this thanks to fine Scottish weather, and both crews pushed off and pushed through several other boats to claim their final positions - our Senior Women overtook a total of 10 other crews. With clear aims and higher stroke rates than in previous head races, both crews upped their game, working together within each boat to maximise their performance.

This is an incredibly positive result for the club, and if these are anything to go by, the club is moving not only in the right direction, but punching well above its weight in terms of facilities and funding. This past year has been one of breaking records, building on our first time qualifying at Henley, to more recently our first BUCs points and now our best Tideway results yet.