BUCS Regatta

The University of Leicester Boat Club had an incredible weekend at BUCS regatta 2018. With 13 crews entered, the club has seen record results and consistency across all four squads. Starting with the women, the Senior Women for the first time in the club’s recent history entered two Athletes in single sculls, both of whom only picked up sculling this year, and successfully qualified Mary Bryant Jeans into the D final for Women’s Openweight Int1x, as well as Alice Bloomer who qualified for the A/B Semis, made it to the A final and then went on to take 2nd place overall, earning the club’s first BUCS medal in 15 years! Onto the bigger boats, and they entered both a four and an eight. The eight, made up of some senior women and a couple of novice girls who stepped up on training camp, placed respectably in the E final, a great result considering the short amount of time in which they’d been in the boat. The four did incredibly well, placing 10th in the time trial taking them through to contend for the A/B finals. They made it to the B final

The Senior Men raced in the Int8+, one of the flagship events of the competition, making it to the D final after hugely competitive time trials where only 4 seconds kept them from making the A/B semis, and went on to place 24th nationally. The Novice Women had two really exciting finals, with the 4+ placing in the D final and powering through from last place in the first half of the race to take 2nd. The 8+ saw a similar placing in the time trials and went on to lead their D final all the way by over a boats’ length to take a confident first place.

And finally, the Novice Men in the 1st 4+ produced an incredible 13th place in their time trial, narrowly missing out on the 12th position that would have seen them through to the A/B semis. However, they fought hard in their final to place an impressive 17th nationally. We saw another success in the 8+, where they came 24th in the time trial, just making it into the D final, and raced hard to move up 2 places in their final, finishing 22nd overall. The regatta has seen fantastic results across the board, with both senior and novice squads consistently placing crews in the national top 25, placing 25th in the overall Victor Ludorum making it one of the best BUCS regatta showings for the club ever! It is with thanks to the incredibly hard work all of the student volunteers within the club that make brilliant results like these possible, as well as support and funding from Sport and Active life and the University of Leicester that have meant we have had fantastic racing equipment to compete in and has no doubt played a big part in our successes (and hopefully more to come) this season.