When the November Early Indication Junior Trials were cancelled last year due to horrendous weather, February's trials became the make or break focus to cream off the best athletes for this year's Junior Squad.
A weekend of contrasting conditions met the small Deben contingent supporting Clio at Boston for the two day event. Luckily Saturday was a perfect spring day, with warming sunshine and a gentle tail breeze for the gruelling 5k time trial. Sitting in her shiny new boat Clio paddled off to the start with her friends and nearly an hour later, she appeared round the final bend for the sprint to the line.
Having past the boat ahead and up alongside the next one up the queue, we could see that she had performed well, and when the results sheet said 18th out of 56 we were jumping up and down! With most of the girls ahead of her having opted for sweep selection, it looked like Clio was the within the top ten of the scullers.
Day 2 dawned with a light covering of snow, but a swing in the wind gave a stiff-ish head breeze in the second half of the course. Then came the blizzards came and snow ball fights. With the extra pressure of the previous event having been postponed, Thrust waited 'til zero hour to decide to send both male and female crews to start in either their doubles or pairs, and with the snow still falling the exodus began.Sadly Clio's doubles partner had pulled out with a back injury and Clio teamed up with a girl from Glasgow instead. By the time the leading boats turned at the top the snow had stopped and the clouds were starting to break. The results, as expected, reflected the couples that practised together and the scratch pairings, including Clio, were mostly further down the list. It was still a superb result from the weekend, however, with just the singles results counting for progression anyway.
