Where be dragons

Despite the somewhat unusual announcement and much confusion at prize giving, let's make one thing clear...

and we now have the golden dragons to prove it. The confusing announcement was made, apparently, based on the even more unusual (and highly erroneous) premise that Batchworth came fifth in the 1,000m final - are you sure?!?! Anyhow, thanks to the sterling work of Sue, Robin, Mike and many others the lost dragons were rounded up and returned to their rightful owners.

Oh, and while we're at it :-)

It's just that this time we happen to be sharing the title with our northern rivals Amathus.

Hopefully there'll be a race report in due course but if not I'm sure Kingston and WAM will come up with something - especially as Kingston seemed to be taking as many prizes as Amathus this year!

In summary:
Batchworth had a great first day winning the 200m open and the 1,000m open events and taking third in the mixed 200m. Batchworth Aspire had a more than busy day and appeared to be on the course almost as much as those black and yellow boats. At one point they had to do three consecutive races back to back so congratulations to them for working so hard and for the trophy they received the next day which, I think, was for winning the junior league.

Sunday saw what we consider to be the best moment of the week-end when the Batchworth Beasties romped home by a clear two seconds in their rep to make it through to the cup major final knocking several premier crews out along the way.
The major final, though went down to the photo finish and boy was it a close one. Unfortunately it was close in the wrong direction and Amathus pipped us to the post by probably no more than the width of monsieur Bangs moustache. 0.12 seconds separating the first three crews. Oh well - second place gave us enough points to win the national open championship once more and get the glittering Oliver Cock trophy... eventually.

Congratulations to Amathus they've fought long and hard to win that race and congratulations to all the other crews for enduring a stormy and mixed up week-end.
Time for some winter hibernation now (unless you happen to be supporting the Henley winter series or training for Australia or just not being lazy or... ok just me hibernating then).