WHILST King Edward VI School rowers were conquering plenty at the Ball Cup, Stratford Boat Club was represented by masters scullers Tim Lunel and Kjersti Rogneflaten-Woolley at Nottingham City Masters regatta.
The East Midlands event is held at Holme Pierrepont which is a purpose-built rowing lake. The regatta is run over six lanes with starts from stake boats and a glorious day with beautiful sunshine and light wind was a welcome rarity for competitors.
Lunel opened the regatta by racing in the first event – the Open Masters D single – but he immediately lamented having accumulated enough sculling points to be in the Band One final and was well beaten by two very good scullers from Exeter and Marlow.
Rogneflaten-Woolley raced against a lady athlete from North Staffordshire Rowing Club and the opponent had a quick start which left Rogneflaten-Woolley down at the 200m mark.
Knowing she has a good middle section, the Stratford rower persevered and at the 750m mark she had taken a comfortable lead which she kept to the finish.
The next race for Rogneflaten-Woolley was a composite race with Derwent in a Women’s Masters D coxed four. They were in a very good race with three opponents but despite good efforts did not win.
The final race of the day was the Women’s Masters D coxless four which is the boat Rogneflaten-Woolley and the Derwent crew had been training for during the winter.
“Luckily there were only two entries in this category. The rudder broke at the start so the Stratford/Derwent crew used three lanes to get down the course and were not disqualified,” said Rogneflaten-Woolley.
“The crew managed to reach the finish line first before the Putney Town competitors. We had a great day and beat the times of younger crews in both coxed and coxless events.
“The next big event for us is the Masters National Championship in Strathclyde in June.”