Weybridge Silver Sculls, 24th October, 2009

Chris Jillings reports...

A couple of weekends agon, Clio and Chris were flying the club colours along the Thames from Walton to Weybridge, taking part in the popular Weybridge Silver Sculls. Well Clio was flying anyway, poor old CJ was trundling along behind,still suffering from a long term muscle tear and a recent cracked shin from a cycle crash. The less said about his time the better, but Clio steamed along in her first division as a WJ17 and was fastest by some 20 seconds over one of her previous National Junior Camp companions from Lea.

The Silver Sculls is one of two head races held on this stretch during the winter, the other being Walton Head, which is rowed in the opposite direction, downstream from Weybridge to Walton Rowing Club. The Silver Sculls, however is slightly more tricky, particularly if there is a strong head current, as the 3,500m course has a large sweeping double bend at the mid point, spanned by Walton bridge. The quickest way is to dive through the inside arch, squeezed up against the bank and on a curve, but with very little current this year the gathered throng were not treated to many shipwrecks at all. I didn't see any swimmers at all this year!

Having rowed on the stretch some six times before, Clio's line was top class and she entered the final 1000m cut right on track with a huge gap behind to the next junior! Sadly, during the lunchtime division for doubles the head wind grew stronger and stronger and now as a WJ18, it looked pretty impossible for Clio to better any of the morning times.

Therefore this year we went along to the evening prize giving feeling pretty confident that she would have at least taken the WJ17 pot in the morning, but when the final results were posted we discovered that Clio had also set the fastest time of any WJ, meaning she received the Champion Girl's trophy too. This was a well deserved prize and quite a notable feather in the cap. She was also only beaten by two other senior women in the whole day.

What a brilliant result!