ROWING: Light Blues impress in trials (From The Oxford Times)

ROWING: Light Blues impress in trials

2:34pm Tuesday 30th December 2008 in

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Don’t put your money on the Dark Blues for the 2009 Boat Race just yet, writes Mike Rosewell.

On paper, Oxford would seem to have the higher pedigree, but Cambridge showed some good form and talent in their trial eights, ‘Looks’ and ‘Personality’, even though their New Zealand coach, Chris Nilsson, formerly with the Oxford camp, arrived just a day before.

The Cambridge trial was marred by a big clash just after Hammersmith Bridge when ‘Looks’ had been warned.

Umpire Boris Rankov, who won a record six Boat Races for Oxford, allowed a restart and ‘Looks’ won by three lengths.

Subsequently, Rankov disqualified them, giving the race to ‘Personality’.

Both crews looked well-drilled and strong and produced good times. Meanwhile, seven locals kept themselves in the selection frame at the Great Britain trials in Boston.

World champion and Olympic lightweight fours finalist Paul Mattick, from Wallingford, won the lightweight sculls, and his senior sculls clubmates, Alice Freeman, Lindsey Maguire and Atlanta St John, finished fourth, ninth and 12th respectively.

In the men’s senior sculls, Tom Solesbury and Colin Smith finished eighth and 14th, closely chased by the young protégé Matt Rossiter from Abingdon School, who was 17th.