National Silver Medals for Upton

With the stalwart Ian Mackie stepping in at the eleventh hour to tow the boat, and Ron Paterson being talked into coxing the crew, the women's novice veteran four of Sue Martin, Lisa Belfield, Deirdre Thompson and Joy Larner set off for the National Veterans Championships at Holme Pierrepoint on Sunday 17th June. Ron and George made up the only other Upton crew, competing at Vet E doubles.

On arrival at Holme Pierrepoint we found two lakes - one laned for racing and the other in the trailer park. Fortunately, Ian has a four-wheel drive car and, being the other sort of vet, he had two pairs of wellies in the boot. The rest of us paddled with shoes off in about 3 inches of water whilst re-rigging etc. Ron and George duly raced their race, unfortunately not coming in the first three. The women's vet novice crew boated on time, somewhat overawed by the crew from Liverpool Victoria Rowing Club, who looked as though they would be more at home on the Rugby field than in a rowing boat! Upton's crew rowed up to the start, practising their race start on the way and was soon attached to the stake boat. Lea Rowing Club just about got there on time - after several calls for them to go to lane 4 - and it was "Attention! Go!" Upton's start wasn't too bad, but the other crews were all slightly up on them at this stage (maybe Liverpool wasn't - but our eyes were in our boat). Ron smoothly encouraged us past the Rugby players and then set our sights on Llandaff (by this stage Lea, who appeared to be very young veterans, were out of the equation - they were obviously going to win, having streaked ahead right at the start). Shouts from Ron: "You're gaining on Llandaff" were initially met with thoughts of "Oh, yeah, that's what the cox always says", but by about three quarters of the way down the course we realised that he was actually telling the truth and suddenly there was a glimpse of their bow person. With great encouragement from Ron, we inched our way past them and ended up powering through to overtake them, and so winning a silver medal in the last 250 metres of the race - a fantastic feeling. Ron set his own personal record that day, as 29 years ago he coxed a crew to a silver medal in the same competition - a fact he kept quiet until after the race!

We went to the medal pontoon to collect our medals, where our feelings about the Lea crew were confirmed, when the official handing out the medals said "Are they really novice veterans?" - he couldn't believe it either! With many thanks to Ian and Ron, who made it all possible and to John Dean who enables us to have an extra outing in the week by coxing us on a Thursday evening.

Deirdre Thompson