The Great Race, NZ 2011

Hamilton Boys lay down a serious Haka challenge. Simon Booth accepts the challenge.

The was high drama in the men's race whilst MUBC's women delivered a lesson in pacing to Sydney Uni.

MUBC men and women were invited to race in the tenth anniversary of the Great Race. This is an invitational event where the University of Waikato invite a male and a female crew for a race on the Hamilton river. This year, male and female races were contested by three crews. There has been a long affiliation with Cambridge University (NZ's Harry Mahon was CUBC's coach in their resurgent years in the early 90s) and CUBC were invited as the star guests along with an MUBC crew. MUBC and Sydney Uni have been invited in turn recently, but this year both were invited to race Waikato's women.

All rowers completed a 500m paired ergo challenge to select the lanes, with no crew wanting to come third. However, this MUBC managed to do narrowly in both men's and women's races. In the men's race Cambridge won, being much larger and more powerful, but MUBC and Waikato went down to the wire in the race for second and third with only half a second being in Waikato's favour by the time the fourth pair had finished racing. MUBC's women had second place with one pair remaining, but SUBC snuck by and relegated the girls to third too.

On the hugely disadvantaged outside lanes at the start, both the MUBC men and women were left behind in the first 150m, but hung on doggedly to the leading boats. Both NZ crews started very quickly, and the women of Sydney gave chase with MUBC not far behind. SUBC put too much into their early efforts and MUBC rowed through the New South Welshwomen to finish in a worthy second place. In the men's race Cambridge could not move quickly enough on the favoured inside station and failed to gain enough water to cover Waikato. They tried to do this anyway and steered into the Kiwis at the first bend twice, causing both crews to stop. MUBC were unaffected, but the race was restarted. CUBC had damaged their rudder in the collision, but fell back quickly at the start and Waikato and MUBC rowed away. The New Zealanders won with MUBC in second and CUBC back in third.

Videos of the racing are on the Great Race website. Follow this link.