We are four guys from West End Rowing Club, based out in Avondale in Auckland, New Zealand. Brad, Henry and Joe were in the Senior 4x which won Gold at the New Zealand National Championships in February this year. After a successful season like that, you start to ask yourself what is next. Then Brad, Henry and myself began to toss around the idea of going to the Henley Royal Regatta.
The three of us were in the last West End crew to go over. We raced in the Thames Challenge Cup. A race for Club level 8+s. West End had won the event at the NZ Nationals and set a new best time as well so we thought that we would have a good shot at it. We asked the guys and when they indicated their interest, we started to get the ball rolling on organising everything.
After putting together a training program, we got into the groove of training, however it wasn't as cohesive as was planned. But we made the most out of our opportunities. We all learned a lot over the campaign, especially when it came to fundraising. I hadn't really done a lot of fundraising personally over the years and so it was a new challenge. We ended up doing a 12 hour and 6 hour Erg-a-thon in town. It was a great way for us to raise money as we had to still be training, but at the same time the boys were on the street meeting people and talking about the Club and Henley and our crew. We also had two quiz nights held at the Club and these were great fun and a great way for us to introduce the crew to the Club and its members. Not only that, but then we also received funding from various sponsors that one of our crew managed to organise. These sponsors were a massive help.
We realised that the funding was pretty crucial, not only in terms of having money for accommodation, but as a good team building exercise. Through each of these events, we were learning to co-operate with each other out of the boat and building Club spirit. This was one of my most memorable seasons, purely because we got to do so many cool things together.
The training wasn't ideal last time as a lot of people had other commitments during the training so we often had to resort to asking people to fill in all the time. I think we had something like 18 or so people fill in, a few of them girls. The other problem is that with more people, time constraints became a factor of the training, so we were limited in the amount of preparation that we could do. In the end it didn't work out too badly, but it could have been better.
Once we were finally over there and had progressed through the first few races, every day became a little more cut throat as the men were separated from the boys. The racing through the week went well with us progressing each time, although there was a rather close one on the second day. Come the final day, it was strange that the boat tent seemed almost like a ghost town after it being bursting with life at the beginning of the competition. We went out with everything that we had and we were beaten by a better crew on the day.
But that didn't detract from the event in the slightest. We had travelled from the other side of the world to pit ourselves against crews from America, England and Ireland and come up trumps all except the one time. Even now when I look back, it was an incredible journey and one that I will always remember. Winning at Henley is extremely hard and the few that do win deserve their praise, however there is also a lot of honour in becoming a Henley Finalist. And I am glad that I can call myself that.
This time it will change.
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