Dear All,

Hope you are all well and getting excited about the Summer Racing season and the Euro Football Championships (or not!) – I am sure we will be watching some of the matches at the Club reminiscing about 1966 when we won something.  I am proud to say that our results thus far this season totally eclipses Roy’s results.

Most importantly, we are hosting Barnes and Mortlake Regatta this upcoming Saturday at the Club.  Very annoying that British Masters is also on that weekend – can everyone who is not racing please give as much support to the Regatta committee in helping out.  NB the car park will be closed.  Good luck to all that are racing we have huge entries in both regattas which is super.

Turning to the Metropolitan Regatta on Sat and Sun last weekend.  This is a premier division event over 2k at Dorney.  We had Pam Devalle and Deborah Mallinson racing in their singles and both girls did exceptionally well.  Pam did her WIM2 1x on the Saturday just missing out on the final  – most of the girls were in the heavy weight category the times nail-bitingly close.  Pam made it to the final of WIM3 on Sunday coming 5th and Deborah came a very exciting and credible 3rd in WELwt 1X an event that contained full time athletes. This makes the run up to HWR very exciting indeed.

Please can the club note HWR in the diaries (17/18/19 June) – as per usual the events get more and more competitive and on Friday 17th our girls will need to qualify for the Regatta.  This takes the form of a time trial –  we are very proud of the girls and please give them all the encouragement for their assault.  It is also a great time to give the club profile and to advertise our friendliness, competitiveness and professionalism to racing. Please continue evangelising about MAABC.   If anyone has time to see the qualifiers the race times are on the website with the first MAABC boat off at 9.10.

I am really delighted to see so many of our athletes really training hard several girls are following the programme and ethos of Merv and Geoff in their training and beginning to see real improvements in both ergos and water speed.  A particular example of continued progress is Zoe Brass who has really embraced the concept of following a dedicated programme and put down an impressive erg score and we are seeing her bomb up and down in the green scull – well done Zoe!

Adam Berry’s team of new members also are showing frightening & dramatic improvements well done Kira, Kaila, Milo, Dita.

Whilst we are all in the grips of serious racing can you mark August 6th in your diaries as we are hoping to hold a club BBQ (volunteers needed) this also coincides with the start of the Rio Olympics so should be a good opportunity to get together and have some fun.  We are also inviting the neighbours QBC over.

As a last shout out we are looking for superb photographs of the club and sculling and rowing pictures with a view to posting them up if you do have some can you submit to either me or the committee there will be a prize of a rigger jigger for the best photographs – donated by myself.

See you at the club.

Good Luck to the Barnes & Mortlake and British Masters Crews.

Nicola