Summer Eights 2025!!
Ah, Summer Eights. The one we’ve all been waiting for. The week when the Isis turns into an ocean of Pimms, blazers and Lycra as far as the eye can see. The time of year when you try to explain to apathetic friends what a bucket rig is and why the concept is hysterically funny. The crowd-drawer, the indisputable highlight of the rowing year, to which Henley and the Olympics are but mere sideshows.
Over the course of a week, all our crews put in a lot of effort; sometimes it took the form of gruelling row-overs, at other times it involved sinking pints of beer to distract us from exams, and by these efforts NCBC did very well indeed, propelling our M1 to heights on the bumps table that it hasn’t enjoyed in decades and getting our W1 back into Div 1 where they belong.
Rowing On:
Summer Eights proper runs from Wednesday to Saturday and involves 85 crews for both men and women, divided into 7 divisions each. There are usually a lot more crews that want to take part than there are slots in the schedule. To thin the numbers, crews which finish in the bottom three divisions or haven’t been entered into Eights before have to participate in Rowing On on the preceding Saturday, and crews are qualified or disqualified based on how they do in this time trial.
Because we’ve expanded a lot as a club lately, the majority of our crews needed to qualify; our M3, M4 and men’s beer boat were competing to be in the top 37 of 58 crews, while our W2, W3 and W4 needed to come in the top 38 of 43.
Thus it came to pass that six New College crews descended on the Isis on a cloudy Saturday afternoon, and put in some very solid performances. In a sign of things to come, W2 got down the course in 3:19, 9 seconds faster than the crew they’d be chasing on Day 1 and earning them 8thplace. W3 put down a 3:33, a very respectable time that outclassed several W2s and comfortably qualified them, while W4 finished in 39th place in just half a second slower than the qualification time.
The star of the show on the men’s side was the beer boat, listed as our fifth men’s boat for Rowing On, who put down a blistering 3:03. Not only were they the fastest fifth boat on the river, again (we actually had some competition this year!), they comfortably beat plenty of M2s to qualify in 19th place, with a great ocean of clear water between them and the following crew. Our M3 got in a nice 3:09, well clear of the disqualification zone, while our M4 narrowly missed out by a couple of places.
With that sorted, NCBC qualified seven crews for the main event – four men’s and three women’s – making us the joint second largest club in the event.
Day 1:
M1 (+1): Strengthened by an Isis rower, a lightweight Blue and an OUBC squad member, and bolstered by a veteran crew, had exceptionally high hopes going into this. They were starting on bungline 10, chasing down Teddy Hall, whom they caught pretty convincingly by the top of the gut.
W1 (-1): They would go on to have a pretty successful campaign, but started by getting bumped on Day 1 by Lincoln.
M2 (~): M2 faced no serious danger from Somerville M1 behind them, but couldn’t close the gap on Wolfson before they themselves very quickly caught a spoons-bound Corpus M1, meaning their best prospect was the respectable row-over which they achieved.
W2 (+1): They had incredibly stiff competition, being chased by a Reuben first boat that came first at Rowing On, would go on to double overbump that day and climbed 9 spots over the four days. Our crew found themselves in a bit of a sandwich but did brilliantly to bump Regent’s W1 before that happened.
M3 (-1): Were also in a tricky spot, being chased by a Univ M3 with a Rowing On time 15 seconds faster than their own. They unfortunately got bumped (and nearly capsized) before Donny Bridge.
W3 (~): Had a decent run down the Isis and rowed over.
M4 (-1): The beer boat got bumped by St John’s, but sang angelically on their way back to the boathouse.
Day 2:
M1 (+1): took on Balliol and knocked them out within a few minutes in the gut.
W1 (+1): reversed the previous day’s loss and knocked Jesus over, making them sandwich boat in Div 1. They couldn’t get Lincoln before they got to John’s, and rowed over well.
M2 (+1): clattered Corpus M1, not for the last time.
W2 (+1): had a tough fight against St Hugh’s, rowing them down over the course and getting their bump past Boathouse Island.
M3 (~):
W3: (-1): Bumped by John’s.
M4: (-1): Bumped by Pembroke.
Day 3:
M1 (+1): Our M1 bumped Magdalen coming out of the gut again. GDBM!
W1 (+1): W1 had a tiring but unconcerning row over at the top of Div 2, being chased by the Jesus crew they bumped on the previous day. They went on to bump St John’s, an exact reversal of their previous year’s relegation (due to a broken rudder) and got back into Division 1 where they belong!
M2 (-3): The boys were looking like they were going to row over, roughly a length behind Linacre coming past BH Island. They were however overbumped by an incredibly fast Hilda’s M1 who got them a handful of strokes before the finish line, knocking them down into Div 4 for 24 hours.
W2 (~): Had another long slog down the course, gradually reeling in Teddy. They went for the final blow around 10 strokes from the finish line, and despite our bow going over their stern, Teddy didn’t concede and no bump was awarded. Knavery.
M3 (-1): Bumped by GTC.
W3: (-3): Overbumped by Jesus.
M4 (-1): Bumped by Balliol M3, but got a shoutout in an OURCs email for their lovely singing so swings and roundabouts.
Day 4:
M1 (~): Our last prospect of blades slipped before our eyes as Univ bumped Keble in front of us, leaving no realistic candidate for the boys to ram their bowball into. Nonetheless, they put down a stellar +3 performance over the four days and elevated us to 7th on the table, the highest the men have been since 2006 and making it 14 races since M1 last got bumped.
W1 (~): Our women faced no serious threat from John’s behind them but stayed around a length off Oriel in front and rowed over.
M2 (+1): A quirk of getting overbumped the previous day was that the gentlemen were chasing Corpus M1 again, having bumped them on Day 2. M2 got to a canvas off them within the first minute and sat there the whole way down the river before finally bumping them 1 length off the finish.
W2: A comfortable row-over, if such a thing exists, with early bumps ahead and behind leaving no serious alternative.
M3 (-1): Teddy Hall rounded off a +11 (!) campaign by hitting our beleaguered M3 early on.
W3: Bumped by Somerville.
M4 (+1): Naysayers might have noted that our beer boat were previously on track for spoons. But the night is always darkest before the dawn, and the dawn in this case consisted of Balliol stacking it into the bank (again) and our crew achieving a respectable if anticlimactic bump by rowing cleanly past them. As Pliny the Elder said, the depth of darkness to which you can descend and still live is an exact measure of the height to which you can aspire to reach.
Overall:
W1: +1
M1: +3
W2: +2
M2: -1
W3: -5
M3: -3
M4: -2