BUSA Regatta 2006- Saturday 29th, Sunday 30th April & Monday 1st May 2006

Reading again performed very well in the small boats: Alex Gregory retained his BUSA singles title in style beating some tough competition from Cambridge. Tash Page stepped up to Womens Championship single this year and was unlucky not to win, but came away with a valuable silver medal. Atlanta St John won the Womens Junior single in style, which is very promising as she is only in her first year at Reading. Sam Townsend picked up a Bronze in the men’s junior single, which was very creditable as it was his 6th race of the day! Mathieu Libaudière narrowly missed out on a gold medal in the Men’s junior lightweight single, less than a second behind the winner. A surprise bronze medal came in the womens novice single from Vikki Rickwood, who until a few days before was not going to be able to take part in this race due to illness. The single scull races were finished off with James Waters (men’s championship lightweight) and Simon Barbour (men’s novice) both unlucky to finish outside the medals in 4th place. This meant that RUBC picked up a medal in 6 of 8 single sculling events and just missed out in the other 2, which is a very creditable result.

The pairs and the double sculls were not a main focus for RUBC at this years regatta, but we still managed to pick up a medal in the men’s championship lightweight double scull. This was a very tough event with gold and silver being taken by international crews and James Waters and Mathieu Libaudière winning a respectable bronze. RUBC also finish 5th in both the championship and junior pair as well as another 5th place in the junior double scull.

RUBC’s performances were very strong this year in the 4’s. Will Robins, Sam Townsend, Mark Symons and Con Sulivan, coxed by Jules Caudwell, produced a very good race to win silver in the championship coxed 4’s event. In the men’s championship coxless 4 RUBC just missed out on a medal to finish 4th. The most unexpected and gutsy race of the weekend came from the men’s junior coxed 4. The crew raced well to make the final but found themselves down from the first stroke. They battled back to win, beating Durham by less than 0.2 of a second! Well done to Dave Ewart, Simon Barbour, Will Morgan and Rory Parsons, coxed by Jules Caudwell.

RUBC collected a number of medals in the quads. The men (Sam Townsend, Alex Gregory, Dave Read and James Waters) got silver just missing out to Newcastle’s top crew and comfortably beating Durham. Then both the men’s and the womens quad showed their power by winning Gold in the sprint events. The womens crew was Atlanta StJohn, Jenny Colins, Freya Porteous and Nikki Brown.

One of the best performances of the regatta came from the men’s 8. RUBC have not raced an 8 at BUSA for 4 years and this year, with only 2 practice outings and after a heavy few days of racing, the RUBC 8 won an impressive bronze medal. This is always a very tough event and the crew of Alex Gregory, Dave Read, Sam Townsend, Will Robins, Mark Symons, Jono Radcliffe, John Brownley and Con Sulivan, coxed by Jules Caudwell, should be proud of their achievement.

The mens and the womens novice crews had a very tough event, with over 40 novice 8’s and 70 novice 4’s. They all raced very well, but were unable to make the finals.

RUBC’s performance this year shows that the senior men’s squad is performing extremely well, and large improvements have been made in the senior women squad and both the men’s and the womens novice squads.