Gold Plated

146th Annual Bedford Amateur Regatta today.

The largest 1-day river regatta in the country, in fact. 295 crews competing in over two dozen different events.

Watching from the bank there is a lot of information to process; the river is filled with a quite bewildering array of age & standard classifications, boat types, class designations and so on.

After a few hours of watching (waiting for one's favoured crew to appear around the bend) one starts to know what to look for: how many oars per side? What colour are the blades? Girls or boys? Age & size ?

Mind you, it is surprisingly hard to tell girls from boys, 4 oars from 8, or indeed anything at 500m distance. Sometimes the best clue comes from the shouts of the other supporters who (perhaps) are better informed. The fallback is to cheer for any boat, just in case.

The regatta ran to a schedule of apparently military precision: nearly 300 races at 2 minute intervals from 8am - 8pm. Despite this, and despite the fact the event did not really run late overall, the boats appeared in somewhat random order at times: one event was announced 45 minutes late, another was ahead of time by a similar amount. Some races were not announced at all.

All of this made for lots of waiting, watching and wondering.

However, by the time the boats reached the finish line, it all came into focus.

Matt and his friends were rowing in the "J14S.8X" class. which is to say the B-boat in the Under-14s age group, in an 8-person boat with 2 oars per rower (whic is called an Octuple rather than an Eight which has one oar per person).

Matt was rowing at Stroke for the B crew.

The A boat, meanwhile, had strong hopes of securing the trophy in the top flight and they "easily" (that is a technical term, seriously) won their first 3 heats to reach the final against a strong St.Paul's boat who had beaten the fancied crew from Radley.

Matt's boat, meanwhile, had a tough draw in the first heat and lost by 2/3 length to a very strong team from Abingdon.

However, the first-round losers compete in another event that leads to the UEFA-cup of rowing - the "plate".

BMS B reached the final of the plate and faced local rivals Bedford school. In a close race, BMS took an early lead which they held against a strong counter from their opponents, winning by one and a half lengths. The joy of victory was obvious.

The A boat rowed their final shortly afterwards. St Paul's provided a much stiffer test, but BMS still prevailed by an exciting 3/4 length margin.

So: honours and silverware for both the J14 boats, and success in many of the other classes as well. A very strong performance all round for BMS at their home event.