JRN Intelligence: Fraser's October Notebook

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After a few false starts, head racing returned to the Thames with a bang this month, kicking off with the closest Pairs Head on record. With 362 crews racing the 4.5km course, the Headship was decided by just one-tenth of a second, as Wilkinson and Kerr from Greenbank Falmouth got the better of the City of Oxford-Upper Thames composite. Having won the event last year in a Cambridge ‘99 boat, his victory this year makes Tom Wilkinson the first man to defend this Headship since 2018 as the 39-year-old former national teamer continues to show himself as one of the top domestic scullers.

On the women’s side, the results were not quite as close, with Nottingham Rowing Club taking the victory by nine seconds, courtesy of their combination of club captain Jen Titterington and performance development academy member Poppy Baker.

In both Championship Pairs events, it was victory on home turf as London Rowing Club took the spoils. In the junior ranks, it was business as usual, with victories going to Leander, St Paul's and Wycliffe at Junior 18 level, with the only exception being Walton Rowing Club winning the women's Junior 18 pair.

Later in the month, the Wingfield Sculls—one of the sport's longest-running events—crowned its 2024 champions.

Seemingly unstoppable, it was Olympic Champion Imogen Grant who claimed top honours in the women's race, securing her second back-to-back Wingfields title. Despite falling behind in the early stages of the race, it was Twickenham Rowing Club's Callum Dixon who finished first in the men's event, displacing last year's victor, Josh Lyon, in the process.

The Ultimate Season Preview

Across the Atlantic, the biggest race of the Fall took place as the Head of the Charles attracted big names from across the globe. The championship events were overflowing with Paris Olympians, but the shock of the event was Finn Hammill, a young lightweight sculler from New Zealand who won the Men’s Championship Single ahead of an all-star field.

In the doubles, there were no such surprises. The British women’s double of Becky Wilde and Mathilda Hodgkins Byrne turned bronze in Paris to gold in Boston, while the Sinkovic brothers were the class of the men’s field.

The Championships Women’s Eight went the way of a Leander's Olympian crew, while Yale won the Collegiate Championship crown ahead of two Washington crews. On the men's side, Cambridge University were the fastest on the water, ahead of Harvard in second; Cambridge's rivals from Oxford finished in eighth after a penalty.

Alongside the usual narratives on the Charles of national team crews and the NCAA and IRA previews, this year's edition provided a rare opportunity to compare the four Boat Race crews early in the season. With Cambridge's men and women performing better, this could be a bad sign for an Oxford squad that has been starved of victory in recent years, especially given the typical rate of crew progression in Ely.

Away from the championship events, there was also a strong Olympic presence in the Alumni Eight as a Washington crew with seven Olympic medalists on board broke the event record, as did Olli Zeidler and fiancée Sofia Meakin when they raced in the Directors' Challenge Mixed Double.

In the youth events, it was a great weekend for British schoolboy rowing, as St Paul's and The Windsor Boys' Schools defended their titles in the eight and coxed quad respectively. On the women's side, it was the big names in US rowing who claimed the golds, with RowAmerica Rye and Los Gatos Rowing Club taking top honours.

A Return to Ways of Old?

Across the globe, there were also a number of sculling matches between some of the world's very best. In Berlin, Olli Zeidler and Simon van Dorp faced off in the inaugural edition of the World Sculling Finals, an event inspired by the professional championships which acted as the pinnacle of the sport throughout the nineteenth century. There, the win went to the home favourite, as Zeidler surged to an early lead and controlled the contest, winning by around ten seconds across the course through the city centre.

Later in the month, both flew across the Atlantic to compete in the Gold Cup Challenge in Philadelphia, joined by defending champion Melvin Twellaar and Belgium’s Tim Brys. With $16,000 on the line, the 750-metre course was played host to nail-biting racing. Eventually, Zeidler ran out of steam, leaving the Dutch duo to battle it out, with Twellaar defending his crown over van Dorp by just 24 thousandths of a second. On the women's side, New Zealand's Emma Twigg defended her title, just under a second ahead of Karolien Florijn, claiming the top prize for the fourth year in a row.

America's Magic Money Tree

Cash prizes were also flowing for domestic scullers across the US, with more than $150,000 awarded throughout the month across the Head of The Ohio in Pittsburgh, the Head of The Charles, the Tuxedo Park 1886 Regatta in New York and the Gold Cup and Lotman Challenges in Philadelphia.

The largest winner was Kara Kohler, the US' Paris single sculler, who won $25,000 across the events, while Michelle Sescher of the lightweight double finished second on the money list from her win on the Charles alone.