Hasler Final 2016, Worcester (25 Sep 2016)

The year's Hasler racing culminated at the finals in Worcester on the River Severn. A team of 31 from BSCC made the long journey to represent the club. There were 728 competitors taking part, meaning that race starts typically had 30, 40, or more, boats starting together (over 50 in the case of Div 5).

The sheer numbers made the river extremely choppy, and combined with the flow and the light wind, resulted in a high number of swimmers.

A special well-done goes to Yazmin who completed the Div 8 race with dogged determination despite having twice fallen in at the start.

Chris's spectacular capsize on the finish line will be a talking point for many years to come, and can be enjoyed on video by anyone who missed it!

Appreciation should also go to Anne & Nathan and to Siobhan for stopping to help rescue other paddlers in difficulties.

Everyone put in a huge effort. Matt was the fastest Stortford K1 over the long course (7th Div 2). Wayne was 5th in Div 9 and achieved a promotion. Murdo and Oscar's times were only fractionally off promotion in Div 7 (9th and 10th respectively) in a photo finish.

With only one medallist (Josh, silver in Div 3), it was not immediately apparent from the individual results that, as a whole, the BSCC team had done extremely well - achieving a 6th place overall. This was out of 38 clubs taking part, each one of whom had earned their place in the finals by their performance in the various regional races across the season.

The scoring for the Hasler final is still done under the old system where half the club's points have to come from the doubles races. Much of the credit for the club's success therefore goes to our three high-scoring doubles boats: Danny & James, Kaitie & Emilia and Euan & Connor.

Danny and James won the Bill Sparkes trophy (pictured with Dave & Jacque) for the highest-placed Veteran crew.

Stortford's excellent results, coupled with a 3rd place overall for Norwich CC and overall win for Chelmsford CC, saw the regional trophy awarded to the Eastern Region.

DOUBLES -
12 miles, 2 portages
Div 2: Danny Beazley & James Smythe 4th (1:31:58)
8 miles, 1 portage
Div 5: Mike Panrucker & Ant Wright 23rd (1:12:00)
4 miles, 0 portages
Div 7: Anne Barnett & Nathan Lambert 29th (37:43)
Div 8: Jacque Cayford & Dave Cayford 12th (37:48), Malcolm Duckworth & Gary Aldam 14th (38:43)
Div 9: Kaitie Owen & Emilia Boylan 6th (39:45), Euan Caton & Connor Higgins 12th (48:02)

SINGLES -
12 miles, 2 portages
Div 2: Matt Parkes 7th (1:34:34), Joe Surrage 14th (1:37:31)
Div 3: Josh Young 2nd (1:37:51)
8 miles, 1 portage
Div 4: Chris Sze 27th (1:13:21)
Div 5: David Gurney 33rd (1:17:43), Octavia Chambers 41st (1:20:13), Mike Toomey 46th (1:27:36), Ricky White (rtd)
Div 6: Lexie White 14th (1:19:16)
4 miles, 0 portages
Div 7: Murdo White 9th (37:30), Oscar Toomey 10th (37:31)
Div 8: Yazmin Layzell 35th (52:18)
Div 9: Wayne Stevens 5th (41:32), Siobhan Latham 23rd (50:50), Jessica Gaynor 28th (54:05)

LIGHTNINGS
u10 Girls: Eilidh White 9th (28:04), Gemma Beazley 14th (31:02)

See:

• photos from the race in Angela's Flickr album
• Chris Sze's You-Tube video of the race
  
• press report in H&E Observer
  
• official results on Marathon website