|
|
 |
|
|
The rollercoaster ride that is rowing
|
|
| |
By Neil Lewis
Northern Sculling Series
Stockton, Head of the Tees, 3 November 2001.
Course: 5000m from countryside near Yarm,
meandering back into town, finish towards
barrage.
Conditions: Warm and calm, bumpy in the city
reaches.
When you're at the top of your game, sport can be a roller-coaster of emotions. One week you're standing on the prow of your boat shouting "I'm the King of the World!" The next you proffer your hand to the victors as a fixed grin cracks the stubble you've cultivated to make yourself look mean. "Heh guys. Well done. But watch it right? Two seconds is nothing." You turn and walk off, hanging tough to be found moments later slumped over a post race banana. Talking makes you cough, all colour has drained from your cheeks, you've spit on your chin, you look at the results and gasp "That can't be right. Who wrote these?" Your life is in ruins. "Oh God! It's all my fault. I hit the bridge. Next week, just wait. I know I've just had another birthday, but I've got the body of a fit 19-year old. Sadly it's at home on it's Play Station". Your clubmates come over. You know they'll understand, they're your friends. They immediately take the mickey of course, and one of them has an idea for an article.
I know these things as I tread in the shadows of greatness. I sit in the passenger seat, I row the wooden boat of life, I know Christer and Brown.
This is typically the lot of those of us who have been rowing in the Northern Sculling Series over the last few weeks. If you have been following our antics in these pages, you will remember it's racing against the clock amongst up to 100 other boats on some of the region's most beautiful rivers. To Christer and Brown it's a matter of life and death. Much fitter this year, they either win their class or they lose, but by the smallest of margins.
Last Saturday saw the Hexham Rowing Club flotilla at Stockton to celebrate the opening of Tees RC's new boat club, shared with other watersports. An idea for Hexham perhaps? Margaret Thatcher was there. Well she was some years earlier. It was then a derelict industrial landscape and she famously wandered off into it for a photo-opportunity. Now it is a model for regeneration, seen by us in a unique way. We race into town from the surrounding countryside, through the Tees' many 180 degree meanders and bridges, look up at the offices of modern service industry, past more buoys and moored boats than you can shake a stick at, and plough through the peculiar currents in the walled city area.
On the way out, Lewis steered the double he shared with Doody into a buoy. "Oops. Here we go again". A passing Brown laughed and threw a ribald remark overboard, and at the start a Tees four continued this badinage. Had everybody seen it? Racing flat out on their way back, neck-and-neck with their target crew for the day, Lewis just missed hitting a large green boat the size of a lorry. Moored. The other crew laughed, but they were soundly beaten. For Doody and Lewis this was a good day.
Siddle and Mulholland were the singles contingent, but felt they could have done better. They will, next time. (Remember this is a roller-coaster we're on). Perhaps that will be in Berwick next week - be there, for it's the decider between Christer and Brown and their sometime nemesis, "the Berwick double". It's honours even and I for one think it should be quite gripping. And, they really are nice guys. When I say gripping by the way, that's the picture I already have of Brown, win or lose, hanging onto to something post-race as he gets his breath back. One thing about David, you know he will give it everything. I don't want to be in the passenger seat on the long journey home if he doesn't.
03 Nov 2001
All Articles
|
| |
|
