Cardiff City Rowing Club

Quick recap from the bank holiday weekend - it was great to be back on the local circuit at Monmouth regatta with some very promising results.

Both days saw a new combination Open 2x of Yiannis and Csege take the fight to Nottingham RC’s performance development crews. They may have been outgunned this time, but the foundation for a promising 2x project has been set with hopefully more to come.

Csege built on his momentum from JIRR by racing J18 1x on Saturday afternoon beating opposition from Hartpury and Monmouth Comprehensive.

On Sunday afternoon he stepped up again, winning Open 1x against strong competition from Bristol Ariel and Worcester RC.

…Meanwhile Mis had a fun regatta on Sunday racing a 1x against quadruple Olympian and 2008 bronze medalist Matt Wells 💀

JIRR RACE REPORT

On Saturday morning, in 2°C cold, Cardiff City woke up in a frosty campsite, still carrying the after effects of a few gin and tonics and an uncountable amount of pizza - because even parents need to carb load and are not subject to drinking bans when tasked with all the grunt work of driving to/from training, laundry, fuelling (both transport and athletes), trailering and time commitment without anything to show for their efforts. (This is what happens when we ask for race commentary and the support team want their 5 seconds of fame).

Anyway, eventually they got to the important stuff. The time trials went down early in sunny windless conditions before some side by side action.

‘Reuben was up first, and what made it especially impressive was that this was his first multilane race in the 1x. He handled it remarkably well. It was a genuinely hard-fought race - unlike at the free merch stalls, everyone had to earn everything. What I saw from Reuben was a mature, proper race. No panic or loss of composure. He pushed through the course with real toughness and dignity. The final order did not change much compared with the time trial, but that’s missing the point. The important thing was whether he could turn the pre-race stress into performance, and from the outside, he did exactly that. He might have a differrent opinion though.

Csege started fourth, but quickly moved into third place with things getting interesting with 800m left. Csege was just over two lengths behind the leader and one length behind second when he made his move. He passed second, taking almost a full length advantage later, and then went after the leader who had two lengths. With 300 metres left and still half a length to overturn, the race leader broke. Csege was then challenged by the chasing sculler who launched an all-out sprint, but it was too late as Csege checked the move, keeping it composed, controlled and strong. Only in the final sprint did he lift the rate to secure the win. The official result shows a 1:54 split in the last 250. From the bike, it felt like even more.’

Full video at https://youtu.be/vIkJe8Azhk4?si=C5F5CZNtXAcKOyL4

On Cardiff Rowing YouTube ( guaranteed you will feel so relaxed after watching)