CHAIRMAN’S VIEW

Happy New Year!

I hope that you have been able to enjoy a well earned break over the Christmas period and that your plans were not too badly affected by COVID. Throughout 2021 we worked hard to comply with Government restrictions and to enjoy our sport with by following guidelines to keep each other safe. As we enter 2022 the infection rates are high and I urge everyone to continue to be vigilant and take precautions when visiting the Club.

The Christmas Supper was a great success with a sell out crowd of diners gathering in the Clubhouse enjoying the festive spirit. However, in the build up to Christmas a number of external events were cancelled as people sought to safeguard their plans for Christmas. Thankfully we are in much better shape than we were this time last year and the events space remains busy. However, there is always scope to do more and I would urge you to consider the Club for family or business events; it offers a great space and a unique atmosphere. Most importantly, the success of our events business feeds straight through to our rowing activities. We have a new Empacher VIII on order for our women and further plans to continue to develop the fleet to support the increased levels of activity.

We have a lot to look forward to in 2022 with strong squads racing for LRC at all levels. The first race will be the Quintin Head on Saturday 29th January. It starts at 13:00 at Chiswick Bridge, finishing at Harrods Wharf. If you are not racing, please come along and offer your support; the bar will be open.

Sadly, due to the high levels of COVID we have taken the decision to postpone the Annual Dinner from its usual date at the end of January. We are hoping to see a reduction in the infection rate enabling us to hold the dinner on Thursday 24th February. We will also continue to open the bar to members on Thursday evenings. Please keep an eye on the Weekly Brief for details.

Simon Harris
Chairman, London Rowing Club

CAPTAIN’S REPORT

Before I can wish you all a Happy New Year and talk about all that is to come in 2022, I need to first cast your minds back to a couple of events in mid-December…

On 12th December, The Remenham Challenge was held from Chiswick Pier to Vesta. This signalled the first hit out in the 8s and would set the benchmark for the major Tideway Heads to come in the first quarter of 2022. LRC boated 11 crews (3x senior women, 5x senior men and 3x masters men) to take on our close friends and rivals from across the Remenham family. Racing was fierce across all the categories and a full set of results can be found below. But a special mention goes to our Open Development crew who won their category, finishing an impressive 13 seconds ahead of 2nd place.

*Open Development winners: (cox) Lilly Lesser, (stroke) Amir Ben-Romdhane, Aurele Tobelem, Aidan Hui, Adam Harris, Josh Brooke-Jones, Gabriel Brown, Lorenzo Venturini, (bow) Luc Gaitskell.*

A special thank you goes to our neighbours, King’s College School Boat Club, who loaned LRC three boats for the race without which we would not have been able to get all our crews on the water. Thank you Duggie, and all at KCS.

Full LRC results from Remenham Challenge 2021:

Open Championship: 5th, 6th
Women’s Championship: 3rd, 5th
Open Club: 3rd, 7th
Women’s Club: 8th
Open Development: 1st
Open Masters B: 3rd, 4th
Open Masters D: 2nd

The following Sunday (19th December) saw a battle of epic proportions take place on the Tideway, a race that attracted media attention and was followed by a flotilla of adoring fans. And in addition to that LRC Christmas VIIIs race, Oxford University also held their Trial VIIIs race.

Due to the understandable pre-Christmas Covid concerns, numbers were down and just two crews (Prancer & Dancer) raced the Club’s Christmas VIIIs event over the gruelling course from the flagpole to the black buoy. Those that could make it though had a very merry time with medals for the winning crew being handed out by special guest Richard Philips, and the prize for best dressed going to none other than the Grinch himself, who for once seemed happy.

*The start of the most exciting race to take place on the Tideway that day.*

*Medals being handed to the winning crew ‘Prancer’ by Richard Philips.*

*The Grinch receiving his prize for best dressed from club Captain, James Sexton-Barrow.*

It was then time for a well-earned break over the holidays, and a return to rowing in the new year.

When I think of what’s to come in the first few months of 2022, I get very excited. Our new Assistant Coach, Killian O’Shea, has already joined us and alongside Chief Coach Stu Heap and his team of volunteer coaches is preparing our athletes for the first big test of the year, Quintin Head on 29th January. Hammersmith Head comes next on 27th February and is quickly followed up by the Boustead & Rayner Cups (London v Thames) on 6th March, the Women’s Head of The River on 12th March and the Head of The River and Vet’s Head on the 26th and 27th respectively. With an enhanced coaching team and so much racing to look forward to in the coming months (not to mention the annual dinner), there is so much to be excited about at our club right now!!

I look forward to seeing as many of you as possible around the Club in the coming weeks, and especially on race days where all are encouraged to come and support your crews.

Wishing you and your family a very Happy New Year.

James Sexton-Barrow
Captain, London Rowing Club

DATES FOR YOUR DIARY

See more detail for these events, visit our Calendar of Events…

IRREGULARS’ REPORT

Around 20 or so of our number attended the hugely successful Christmas Dinner at the Club - one of our tables coming second in the wonderfully conceived quiz.

Christmas eights was next up with Jonny Akehurst winning the fancy dress prize with a very creditable costume and acting performance.

We are warming up now for the eights season and have made an entry into the Hammersmith Head on the 27th February.

In addition to our regular outing time of 10:00am on Sundays, I just want to send out a reminder that 10:30am on Wednesdays is also is an outing available to all. This one is normally prearranged (to a degree!) by Tom Blackett or John Auber - they normally put out a couple of quads or thereabouts. Please get in touch with them or just simply let them know via WhatsApp of your interest. If you are not working, you know what to do!

Eddie Markes

SAD NEWS

It is with huge sadness that we announce the death of Andrew Keat yesterday the 12th January. He was a hugely liked and respected member of the Irregulars for many years joining the club in the late eighties. For the last 4 to 5 years he has been suffering with Motor neurone disease but has borne it with huge bravery and bonhomie. The Club extends full support and condolences to Caroline and the Keat family. The Club flag will be flown at half mast over the coming weekend in his memory.

*(Left to right) Stuart Suckling, Eddie Markes, Andrew Keat and Roy Brook.*

NEW MEMBERS

We would like to welcome the following new members to the Club:

Jack Bannenberg
Joe Bunting
Richard Chesher
Rorie Henderson
Michaeljohn Kalakoutis
Nicola Lawless
Beatrice Richmond
Kathryn Roberts
Eloise Sentence
Honoria Simpson
Ella Thomson
Billy Wilkinson
Steve Wilkinson

We hope you will enjoy being part of the London Rowing Club community and will help us build an ever happier and more successful club.

We are always pleased to have more members so, if you know of anyone who think might like to join the Club, please either let us know or encourage them to get in touch with us themselves.

There is information on becoming a member on our website: https://www.londonrc.org.uk/membership-enquiries or you can contact the Club’s Membership Secretary, Jessica Salter, whose email address is membership@londonrc.org.uk

Andrew Boyle
Honorary Secretary, London Rowing Club

CLUBHOUSE 150th ANNIVERSARY IN 2021

Well, 2021 has come and gone and members may be wondering how the Sub Committee on the Clubhouse’s 150 anniversary has been getting on. The answer is that the pandemic has materially affected progress, in particular for visiting libraries and archive centres where we might want to conduct research. Several of the potentially most useful have been closed altogether.

However, progress is being made. Simon Smithson, who is in all but name the Club’s Honorary Architectural Consultant, has been doing an analysis of over one hundred architectural drawings of the building and selecting those of greatest interest. He has also been seeking out possible architectural historian expertise from his professional contacts. Even Country Life have been interested to know what we are up to. Toh Shimazaki have provided some material on the 2004-6 development on which they were lead architects. Richard Metcalf has been along to the Wandsworth Archives.

One or two more contributions from members have been promised and have still to come in. The Sub Committee will need to decide in what form the anniversary will be marked – my money is on another booklet published by the Club, but we shall have to see. If this is what we decide to do, Anthony Jones stands ready as the graphic designer.

One of the advantages of delay has been that we have had more time to seek out illustrations. A real find has been an 18thc print by J. Boydell showing the whole sweep of the Putney foreshore – see image below. It will be used to help illustrate a contribution from Peter Fraser, already in, on the legal history of the land on which the clubhouse stands. The Club deeds were useful here.

For an international crew who hoped to come to Henley to race crews from all over the country, facing two crews from the same club may at first sight not have been ideal, however this gave the crew from Hanover a chance to form some real connections and friendships. This led to kit swaps and drinks in the Angel on the Bridge!

The view, as will be seen, is taken looking ‘upstream’ from the original wooden bridge, built in 1729, which crossed the river from Fulham. The bridge used a curious curved route to land at the churchyard of St. Mary’s where traffic had to do an awkward 90 degree turn uphill to reach Putney High Street. The bridge, with its cumbersome and closely grouped uprights sticking out of the river bed, must have been a real impediment. This doubtless explains why nearly all rowing, including the Boat Race, was ‘upstream’ of Putney. The old bridge was not demolished until 1886, thirty years after the Club was founded.

To return to the anniversary, it turns out in fact from a careful reading between the lines of contemporary annual Club reports that there may have been “teething” problems with the new clubhouse building and that these were not fully resolved until the first half of 1872. So perhaps the real anniversary is 2022, and not 2021, after all.

We will keep members posted.

Julian Ebsworth
LRC, Librarian and Archivist

GLOUCESTERSHIRE CHARITY SET UP BY FORMER LONDON MEMBER

Indiajane Cox (LRC member 2011-2012) has set up Just Row Gloucestershire based and operating from Gloucester Boathouse. JRG has recently achieved charitable status with its main aim being to help those less fortunate in life achieve some positive outcomes through rowing.

Indiajane is 51 and now lives in Gloucester with her family. She took up rowing just over eleven years ago, caught the bug, became a level 2 coach and is passionate about extending the benefits of rowing to a wider audience and those less advantaged in life.

She has set up partnership links with the NHS, Macmillan Cancer Support, Youth Gloucestershire and a local Canoe Club specialising in helping those with autism. These organisations send her candidates and she helps them get to grips with rowing to the best of their abilities. She has consistently observed that after sessions candidates are bubbling with enthusiasm and renewed confidence which, of course, is a huge contributor to their mental health wellbeing.

She has a varied amount of equipment, including stable singles and doubles with adaptive facilities, a fine boat adaptive double, a 'bank tank' and a large amount of equipment "aids" to enable students to get around and into boats.

Typically, and in between her regular job as a rowing coach at a local school, she does one full day and three mornings per week pursuing the aims of her wonderful charity. She has a mixture of rowing volunteer friends and paid helpers to assist.

She has also been joined as part of her team by an ex paralympian named Rob Holliday who, as a rowing coach, brings a tremendous amount of experience and expertise to her project.

*Rob Holliday - ex paralympian rowing coach.*

We commend Indiajane for her wonderful work and LRC can feel a little bit proud to have played a small part in her initiative.

Should you be inspired by this story and minded maybe to partake or make a contribution towards this worthy cause please do get in touch with the writer.

Eddie Markes

OBITUARY FOR JOHN MILLBOURN

We were sorry to lose John Millbourn last summer at the age of 87. He gave much to the sport of rowing at large. Tom King has written an excellent obituary, describing John as a “restlessly active man all his life. Someone of whom LRC can be rightly proud.”

The obituary can be found at here and on the LRC website in the Obituaries section under “News”.

VOGALONGA 2022

Things are looking promising for our LRC Venice trip to go ahead for the first time since 2019. This year, the Vogalonga is scheduled to take place on the 5th June.

Fourteen of the twenty who signed up for last year’s event have signed up again and three more Irregulars have now done so too, so we have only three more places to fill.

If you would like to come to Venice this year, please will you email me as soon as possible. My email address is miles.preston@londonrc.org.uk

Places will be taken in the order in which I receive your emails. Insofar as we exceed the twenty places available, I will make a reserve list, also in the order I receive your emails.

Miles Preston
Vogalonga Trip organiser

REPORTING SAFETY INCIDENTS

All members are reminded that if you are involved in or witness a water safety incident, you are required to report it on safety@londonrc.org.uk

The Club will file any necessary reports on your behalf with British Rowing and the PLA. Members should not submit reports directly to either body.

NOTE FROM THE EDITOR

My thanks to everyone who has contributed to this edition of the London Roar. If you have an idea for an article or would be interested in submitting a piece for inclusion in a future edition, please email me on miles.preston@londonrc.org.uk

Please do not submit an article without first liaising with me.

Miles Preston
Editor of The London Roar