Boat Club News

04 Mar 2009

In 2009, ChChBC crowned the spectacular results of the previous year with another set of excellent results - in particular the capture of the men's Headship. This year we were particularly reliant on a strong novice intake; their achievements are testament to all the hard training they put in, and the expert coaching they enjoyed.

On 28th November 2008 a special dinner was held at Christ Church to mark the retirement of Boatman John Wade. The after dinner speeches included the presentation of a Boat Club blazer to John by the current Boat Club. After a wonderful dinner, Jon Carley gave a speech making it clear (just in case any of us were not already aware!) how fortunate Christ Church was to have John as Boatman and how his dedication to the Boat Club really was above and beyond the call of duty.

May 2008

Christ Church Boat Club picked up two wins at Bedford Regatta last weekend coming out on top in College VIIIs and Senior 1 VIIIs.

May 2008

Christ Church oarsman Richard Fergie won Gold in the Novice Single Sculls category at the BUSA Regatta at Strathclyde.

Richard won his final by a clear margin of 17 seconds in a time of 8:12 to finish victorious amongst the field of 19 competitors.

Christ Church Boat Club offers Richard many congratulations for his success and hopes it will be the first of many such victories.

The House had a truly excellent Torpids on both sides of the Boat Club- the best in some years. A great deal of effort had gone into preparing the crews from October – including the appointment of two professional coaches, long outings at Wallingford and a January training camp on the Tideway in London. This delivered spectacularly.

The Boat Club continued its proud association with the KSRV Njord club, of the University of Leiden in the Netherlands, this weekend with a crew of 4 rowers from Njord coming to Oxford to compete in the Oxford City Regatta.

A total of 7 Christ Church crews competed in Summer Eights 2007.

The Men's 1st VIII rowed over for two days before being bumped by Oriel on Friday. On Saturday they were unlucky not to bump Oriel back before eventually falling to Univ to finish 6th on the river.

The Women's 1st VIII produced good row overs on each day. Despite appearing to have the edge in boat speed over Hall they never quite managed to close the gap and finished in 2nd position behind Teddy Hall.

Congratulations go to Tom Cassidy and Jade Whitlam for their part in yesterday's victorious Henley Boat Race crews. Challenging conditions on Henley Reach, thanks to the stiff north-east breeze, forced a shortening of the course to less than 1500m after the start was moved downstream to Upper Thames. This didn't prevent Oxford winning the Francombe Cup for the sixth year in a row!

OULRC beat CULRC by 1 length, with Tom Cassidy rowing at 6

Osiris beat Blondie by 1 length, with Jade Whitlam rowing at 3

In January this year the Christ Church women headed over to Njord University, Leiden, for their pre-Torpids training camp. With our huge novice intake, the girls were keen to learn more about rowing and to see how other boat clubs trained, and socialized! We were kindly met at the station by Jenny, one of our Dutch friends, and the most amazing car, which managed to swallow all our luggage. This was a sizeable amount considering the voluminous mixture of lycra and fancy dress items we had been encouraged to bring by Jenny and Paula, in preparation for a Moulin Rouge theme party at the end of the week.