Cambridge University Boat Club’s Women's spring season starts with Trial Eights which will take place on Thursday 6th January. The annual intra-team event is a tradition for Oxford and Cambridge in the preparations for the Boat Race.

Background

Trial VIIIs is an important race in the Boat Race Season for a number of reasons; testing the performances of athletes and coxes and introduces the teams to the official Boat Race Umpires.
The races will take places over The Championship Course starting in Putney and finishing in Mortlake and will be held on the same Tide as The Boat Race in April. These squad races are the only opportunity Cambridge has to race the full course under the gaze of their official race umpires before the big day in April. The Cambridge Women’s Trial Races will be Umpired by John Garrett.

In the weeks leading up to the race the coaches will have split the squads in two, as the coaches try to build evenly ‘matched ‘crews. This race gives the Coaches another opportunity to see how athletes perform under intense side by side pressure, if the crews are ‘matched’ they should be moving at similar speeds, creating tight and often exciting races. Coxes will be under pressure to give their crew the edge, to ensure steering is as good as possible, to test the individual rowers on their ability to perform under pressure. The result here will go a long way to deciding the crews that will represent Cambridge in the Blue Boat and Reserve Crew.

Special Names for racing crews?

Another feature of the Trial Eights is the names given to the crews. The student athletes will select names for the crews, often drawing on key moments in history or deeply personal connections to drive intra-team competition and inspire a purposeful winning mind-set for the teams. This year the Cambridge Women’s crews are named "Buzz" and "Woody". A reference to two dogs owned by Women's Chief Coach Patrick Ryan