Qualification races

I'm going to skip over Thursday as a full blog entry.  The very short version is that we had a day similar to Wednesday in which we practiced twice during the day.

V8 practicing on the course

Friday was a day of two different tales.  In the morning the V8 had a much different practice than the fours.  The V8's practice consisted of a boat trip up the river to Reading, where Saturday's Reading Regatta will occur.  The two fours had another "traditional" practice in preparation of their qualification races later that day.

I was going to post about the awesome trip up river with the eight but I thnk the fours deserve the focus of this post.  I will post the pictures and blog of the v8 trip at another time, maybe in conjunction with our trip back from Reading Saturday night.  

Both fours were to compete in the Prince Albert cup at HRR, but first they needed to qualify.  (The V8 pre-qualified for their event with their spring race results). While our 2V8 had a great season their results were not sufficient to pre-qualify them as the split up fours in the Prince Albert cup compared to many schools fielding their top 4 as their entry. There are only so many entries in each event at HRR and the steward of the regatta determine the crews that are pre-qualified and the rest of the many entires that need to qualify.
For this qualification event there were 22 crews, that were not pre-qualified, that were racing for the last 6 entries into this HRR event.  The qualification race is run different than the HRR events in which it is run very similar to a head race where crews are started down a course with staggered starts and the best times win.  In this case the 6 fastest time qualify.
This Friday afternoon it was time for our fours to put on their uniforms and race down the course to earn a spot in the Prince Albert cup.  Unfortunately the odds were against us and both crews failed to capture one of those top 6 positions in qualification.  Both boats had incredible races. I know speaking with the Lomi four that it was one of the better pieces they rowed.  And when the Kelsey four passed by me, they looked very fast and comfortable.   We thought one or both of our boats would qualify then we heard the results that neither qualified.  Again unfortunately they were competing against a crowd of very fast crews that were able to edge out our time.

Lomi four in Qualification rowing strong

Kelsey four in qualification

The fours trip is not over yet.  They have some very exciting rowing tomorrow at Reading.  And they still get to experience a lot of the fun of HRR despite the disappointing early ending.  Although I am proud of both fours performance we are still in shock of the results of the qualification race, and it is still a little soon before we can have an uplifting post.  But the fours will race tomorrow like there is no tomorrow and we'll have a much better stories to be told.