In this year’s Summer VIIIs competition, SABC achieved unprecedented success with a treble blade winning campaign! The club entered two men’s boats, two women’s boats and a mixed third boat into this year’s regatta and had over 50 rowers and coxes participate (see photo attachment). W1 and W2 combined to be the most successful women’s crews on the river as both boats won blades, with a total of eight bumps combined. M2 won five-bump blades with a double bump on the final day as the sandwich boat. M1 and W1 are also both ranked at their highest positions in Summer VIIIs history as the club looks to move up the bump charts. In total, M1, W1, M2 and W2 registered a combined 14 bumps without being bumped with the third boat being bumped twice and avoiding spoons.

 

W1 absolutely dominated the river this year and won Summer VIIIs blades for the first time in exactly a decade after bumping Worcester II, Queen’s I, St Peter’s I and Wadham II to finish position 6th in Division III, on a par with their historically highest position! M1 returned to Summer VIIIs after winning impressive blades last year to a challenging campaign as they chased Somerville I every day until the finish line, usually with a quarter of a boat length separating the two boats. It wasn’t until Day 4 that they finally bumped just past boathouse island, moving to the highest position of an SABC M1 boat ever in any bumps competition. M2 continued their record from Torpids 2016 to win blades for the first time in Summer VIIIs after bumping Mansfield III, Keble IV, Merton III, Jesus IV and Hertford III. With 9 out of 9 potential bumps in Torpids and Summer VIIIs 2016 combined, M2 have performed admirably this year. W2 also won blades for the first time in Summer VIIIs (and the first time for a second women’s boat in SABC history) after bumping St Anne’s II, Christ Church III, New College III and Exeter II. At Summer VIIIs, SABC second boats registered a total of nine bumps to be the most successful second boats in terms of bumps! This is testimony to how broad SABC’s line-up of rowers is during this academic year, allowing us to enter two very competitive boats per gender. Finally, our mixed third boat M3/W3 was arguably the happiest boat on the river. This boat gave many SABC rowers who had been trained back in Michaelmas an opportunity to participate in the historic competition after successfully rowing on -- with a total of 18 different oarsmen and -women rowing in the mixed boat alone during the competition.

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Experience the excitement of the last day of racing in our coxes' headcam videos below and find all other races and bump cams on our YouTube Channel and Facebook page!