Henley Masters Regatta, July 12th-13th

14th July, 2024

This is why we row! Tideway heads and six lane racing at Nottingham are always good value; but for veterans, nothing beats the visceral excitement of match racing over the famous track at Henley Masters. This year, the mens masters took a D4+ (Matt Clayton, Ed Haddon, Andrew Gordon-Brown, Paul Darvill and Maggie Cooke) and an E4- (Marc Baldwin, Mike Murphy, Charlie Jackson and Ian Townsend) to the regatta, held over 1000m section of the course, the week after Henley Royal. The regatta is held over two days, and both crews breezed through their early rounds on the Friday, looking strong and composed, setting up an exciting finals day for the club on the Saturday.

First up was the E4-, racing a Monmouth crew with international pedigree, in the semi final. It was an exciting race; Monmouth took an early lead of around a length, but never broke clear. Continual attacks by the Minerva crew brought them back to as little as a half length going into the final quarter, but in the end, Monmouth had just enough and ran out winners by that verdict and went on to win the overall event.

Having won their semi on the Friday evening, the D4+ faced Upper Thames in the final. To call the UT crew ‘stacked’ is something of an understatement; James Cracknell was in the stroke seat and Alex Partridge was at three! Our crew was not intimidated and rowed their best possible race, but in the end it wasn’t enough and UT ran out winners by two lengths in a time most of the eights were struggling to match. Cracknell looked gratifyingly spent at the finish.

We go to these national level events to measure ourselves against the best and, this year, very strong Minerva crews came up against absolutely top class opposition and gave excellent accounts of themselves, demonstrating again the progress that this squad continues to make.
Andy Tyler, Masters Men

Masters Women had entered two quads for Henley, but unfortunately one had to drop out due to Covid. The Quad D4x of Lorna, Katrina, Emma and Heidi at stroke put in a great effort on the day, with two of the crew racing Henley for the first time.

It was only the week before that we had been cheering on Minerva’s senior men; this week, we – along with two master men’s crews – were the ones competing. We were both excited and nervous.

Conditions were good: dry with a glimmer of sunshine and a light wind. We had a great start to the race but were distracted by unfamiliar waves. We pushed on, but with the untimely speeding of a pleasure boat on the other side of the boom, the waves seemed relentless, making it hard work and affecting our form in the middle section. We lost against Tees, but we will be back next year better prepared and ready for anything that comes our way!
Katrina Hayes, Masters Women