National Schools Regatta- Non-Championship Eights

If the results from School’s Head are anything to go off, we can expect there to be a spirited fight between four crews for medals, and a significant drop off after that.

The results above, backed up by a similar set of results from Wallingford and Bedford regatta show Bedford, Enniskillen Royal (formerly Portora), Great Marlow and Norwich as serious medal contenders. Bedford came second this event last year and after leaving last year's Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup finalists, Radley, over a length down on home turf over less than 1500m, many would argue they should have stepped up into championship eights. 

Evidently the Irish have been away from the GB racing circuit, and this could benefit them. We expect that they have been working hard behind the scenes and will be looking to surprise come Saturday. 

It must not be forgotten that there is a serious chance of a NonCh8+ school making the A-final, with the absence of last year’s finalists Winchester, and the lacklustre performances of Radley and Westminster.

The close nature of competition between Great Marlow and Bedford prevents us from making any prediction, and they never faced off at Bedford Regatta. As you can see, Bedford beat GMS by a fairly significant margin at School’s Head, but GMS managed to claw this back at Wallingford – although, Bedford were missing their top guy, Conor Sheridan. A 6.20 at Wallingford puts GMS in a good position, some near twenty seconds ahead of Monmouth School, who alongside Pangbourne, don't seem to be in a challenging position this year. 

Dulwich College finished tenth at School's Head this year, but don't really seem to have the depth into the eight although led by Paddy Craig who returned from Munich a few weeks back with a couple of medals. Perhaps interesting they haven't opted for the four, but  as always from the Dulwich boys, we could always be in for a surprise, although we hope surprise swims will be left in 2017. We're personally most interested to see if Paddy keeps his word and models his promised summer look 2k18 which took the world by storm back at Hampton. 

Judging by Bedford’s performance in relation to other crews at Wallingford, it looks likely that GMS were able to catch Bedford because they got faster, not just because Bedford stagnated/got slower. This step on, from recent results, looks not to have been matched by Norwich School.

Therefore, we predict that perhaps the biggest race of the day for this category will be the semi-final, with Bedford being the most likely to make it to the A-final. If they can’t manage it, our overall prediction is Bedford for the gold, followed by GMS, with Enniskillen taking the Bronze.

Oli

J18