10-07-01 GIVING BLONDES A BAD NAME...

While watching the semi-finals at Henley Royal Regatta (not even noticing the racing crews who are piling past) a certain blonde, who shall remain nameless but is called Rona, was heard to remark...

"why do all the chairs have HRR stamped on the back? What does that mean?"

oh dear....

10-07-01 BY ROYAL APPOINTMENT?

what is the world coming to?

10-07-01 THE GREAT QUAD SCULLS MYSTERY OF 2001
Potomac's unfancied crew in the Men's Quad Sculls at HRR turned out to be none other than the US squad crew which came second in the Princeton round of the World Cup in April, where Messrs Sanders, Gorman, Wilkinson and Beyreuther came a close to another US squad crew containing Jamie Koven, but beat Brazil, Mexico and Spain. (see fisa.org).

Now the slug had a chat to the Potomac crew over a glass of champagne on Saturday night, and was MOST interested to find out that Potomac were specifically told by the HRR Stewards NOT to enter the international standard Queen Mother Cup.

Indeed rumour also has it that the eventual winners of the Men's Quadruple sculls (University of Technology Sydney and NCRA), who knocked out Potomac in close race on Saturday and went on to win comfortably, (and, who it should be added, are a crew of Sydney Olympians) - originally entered the Queen Mother Cup and were also bumped down to the club event

Why then did the Stewards not leave these crews up into the under-subscribed Queen Mother? The rules of the Men's Quads state "No heavyweight, lightweight or FISA Senior B (under 23) national crew may contend for this prize"... What does a crew have to do to be excluded under the above definition? Win an Olympic final?

Could it perhaps have anything to do with the fact that Steward, Sir Steve Redgrave, looking for a 20th Henley medal, had entered the Queen Mother with Leander? Could the embarrassment of a possible defeat of the great Sir Steve's crew at the hands of some International quad scullers have lead them to ring fence the event?...shurley not..

Have removed the serious opposition it then appears that, in order to make it really easy for Sir Steve, the Stewards then invited some frankly embarassingly low quality crews to race against him (the Upper Thames quad that raced on Sat in the QMC was their 2nd quad, their first quad failing to even qualify for the "lower" Mens' Quads event). They also asked Ian Watson's LRC scratch crew to race, despite not allowing them into theVisitor's without qualifying, not to mention the final victims - The Queens' Tower/LondonRC quad of Rich Kelsey, Rod Chisholm, Phil Vondra and James Walker who also got bumped up from club to QMC even though they were completely eligible for the club quad and got subsequently beaten by LRC by 3/4L.

The outcome was, of course, that Sir Steve managed to win (a mere 14 seconds slower then the winners of the Men's Quads),

ahhh.. god is in his heaven and all's right with the world....

um except even the Australian schoolboys in the Fawley Challenge Cup covered the course some three seconds faster than the Leander crew - Clearly it is a good job none of the schoolboy quads were bumped-up either!

The slug hopes that next year, international level quads will be encouraged to enter the international event and club crews who have trained all year, and are on the pace will be allowed to race crews of their own standard...

03-07-01THE CONSTANTLY CAPPED COACH
One day the Constantly Capped coach of the Red, White and Black girlies, got the call from the great Gods of rowing based in Hammersmith asking if he wanted to aid in the transportation of the boats of the Gods to Vienna. The CCC of course said "Yes" as the call of the Gods proved too strong to resist.

Whilst in Vienna the CCC did all manner of important tasks - including Videoing of the Gods (which included the Godesses of the coxless pair catching a truely monstrous crab of Gods whilst doing a practice start...) but during CCC's time off, he decided to do the cultural thing and visit Vienna's fair...

After several rides (pausing only briefly for a beer inbetween ) the CCC was on a ride that he thought would pose no problem for a coach of his stature - as he is used to being thrown around in a launch in the middle of the Tideway. During the ride the CCC was feeling a little worse for wear thinking he had weathered the storm of having filmed the Goddesses of the coxless pair, but their power proved too strong when another person on the ride screamed for more and it started again.

Alas, this soon proved too much and the CCC started to feel very unwell and was convinced his Kebab had been messed with or his last beer was a dodgy one.

He thought "I am going to be sick - and on this ride that could be very very messy". The only receptacle to hand was the trusty cap of the Red, White and Black, which was duly filled and carried dripping during the ride in question. But it seems that the Goddesses of the coxless pair were happy and content with the punishment handed out to the CCC, as they managed to go on and win in Vienna.

The CCC was seen at HRR, arriving just in time to see his wife race on Sunday, sporting a new trusty cap as the Holy Cap of the Red, White and Black is still sitting in a bag...

The Moral of the story is, if you see the CCC and the Holy Cap, do not, under ant circumstances ask what the smell is - especially if he is with his minions from the Yellow pair of the Genesis experiment because it could be either the Holy Cap or the Unholy feet of the Australian.