Last Saturday morning the crewmembers of six Novice eights, four Senior eights and two senior fours made their way down to the UL boathouse, all keen and ready for the Allom Cup. Every year the event hosted by UL is the only opportunity for all the University of London colleges to measure up against one another.

IN a cup race format, the races begin with heats in the morning and slowly evolve into finals in the afternoon.

It was an exciting day of racing for UCL with the novices shining through as a force to be reckoned with.

Having drawn UCL II our first men’s novice boat (UCL I) had a tough race first thing in the morning. However half a canvas was enough and they progressed on to the semi finals. Our women’s second boat suffered the same fate as our men’s, however the victors of their race were LSE I who managed to take a minimal lead just before the line. Our women’s firsts, having beaten UCL III, now had to face LSE’s first boat in the semi final, a tough race later they were through to the final, to the excitement of everyone who was at the boathouse supporting the crews.

Similarly the boys’ first boat made it through to the final after a cruise control semi.

The senior crews looked like their day was simply a routine, race after race they boated, jumped out switched crews around and headed back out to win another race. However the sheer amount of races they were entering caught up with our senior women first when they lost the semi-final of the four to King’s College by a foot.

After the lunch break the finals started at the Chiswick Bridge end of the race course as the tide had turned and was now flooding, meaning the finish line was directly in front of the boat house and all the spectators. With UCL boats in six out of the eight finals, we had to employ some friendly RUMS folk to cheer with us, as everyone seemed to be out racing on the water.

At the medal presentation colleges grew slightly impatient with the seemingly never-ending repetition of the sentence ‘…and the winner was UCL’. However it was St. George’s who had the last laugh. In a photo-finish race they managed to beat our senior men by a verdict of half a foot, thereby also winning the Allom Cup. With humility and great sportsmanship the men’s first eight congratulated the St. George’s crew while secretly vowing to train harder than ever to never lose to them again.

Having won five out of the eight competitions last Saturday makes UCLUBC the club to beat within the University of London colleges and a promising start into the winter training season.

Max Steiger, President