Crashing and shouting at Tarn!
One event that was overlooked by our otherwise keen eyed, on-the-spot reporter at Talkin Tarn regatta was the WJ15 2X second heat, featuring Clare and Caitlin. Inspired by the effort of Bianca and Hannah in the first heat our girls got away to an explosive start in a 3 lane race. This was more of a surprise to them than anyone else, having suffered ‘technical difficulties’ on so many start lines this season. The ambition here was to row cleanly and to see how good they could be (next year?). With 2 crews qualifying for the final, St Leonards were targeted as the crew to beat, as the St Peters crew was known to have championship experience. As expected, St Peters dominated from the start, but the race between St Leonards and Tyne United was close and ‘competitive’ throughout.
As the boats came close together in mid race, one of the St Leonards girls shouted “move over Tyne”, suggesting that Clare had perhaps steered off course!; Clare was having none of it and responded quite correctly with “Shove off, your in our lane!!!”. Caitlin decided to keep a low profile from this point on, but was a little excited by this new turn of events. perhaps there was more to rowing than she had previously realised!
From this point on, every call from St Leonards for a ‘push for 10’ was matched by our girls, and followed by Clare’s “and Kick!”. They battled all the way to the line before getting entangled in a web of blades as St Leonards cut across again (allegedly) after the finish. This distraction may (or may not) have caused the girls to run aground (a new club tradition maybe?) ; and the fact that a St Leonards rower abandoned ship and helped TURC to get moving again might suggest guilt to some people, but for us impartial reporters it was seen as a smoothing of the waves, so the competitors could now become Facebook friends.
So no final for TURC this time, and Caitlin summed it up with – “before the race we didn’t expect to come anywhere near qualifying, but we rowed the course very well and are happy with our performance”.
COOL 
It should be noted that the on site reporter was so ‘keen eyed’ that he didn’t even see his son race. (ed.)
