In the middle of a British heat wave, Henley and friends packed their bags and set off for the European Club Crew Championships in Budapest.  To set the scene, this competition is for the best crews from each national league around Europe and because of the way some European national team selection processes work, can sometimes feature full national squads in disguise (or not in disguise, if you’re from Russia).
 

I think the quote from Phil T summarises how we all felt - “Before I knew it I was sitting on a flight destined for Budapest.  While listening to the pre-flight safety briefing I still felt that Henley Dragons was off to the slaughter house.”

Most of the crew arrived on Wednesday to settle in to our budget hostel, fully furnished with IKEA death traps (err, I mean bunk beds).  We kitted ourselves out in new HDBC polo shirts and wandered down to the race venue to check it out and to sort out our accreditation cards (ah it feels good to be labelled an “athlete”!).

That evening, we headed out for our first Hungarian meal.  “Excellent memory of the first night we all arrived and went out for a traditional Hungarian meal complete with musicians.  Food was interesting and the music even more so.  It was the start of an excellent few days.”

The following morning it was off to the race venue for the first practice session.  To our surprise, we had our own tent for the weekend – although it was more like a sauna when the temperature rose towards the end of the racing!  Positioned in Camp Brittania, we had Thames Fortitude and Amathus pitched on one side of us and our GRR rivals the Concrete Dragons on the other side.

We had a good session out on the water, although Malc’s genius idea of using walkie talkies to communicate with Dave whilst he was on the bank didn’t quite work out.  The range of 10m wasn’t really sufficient… 

After a few hours’ break in which most people had a siesta, it was back for another training session which went equally well.  We even managed to balance the boat towards the end!

On Thursday night we celebrated at the opening ceremony, where hundreds of the participants gathered together to watch a Chinese lion dance, traditional Hungarian dancing and a crazy troupe of fire dancers.  The highlight of the evening was a scantily clad girl doing the hula hoop whilst it was on fire; the low point was the revelation that there was going to be a team meeting at 9am on our one free morning.

Team meeting aside, Friday was the 2000m.  Whilst some people favour the short distances, Henley has historically done well at long distance racing – plus we need to start getting into training for the HWS!  However the look of dread on Dave’s face when he was told there would be 19 boats in the race, each starting at 12 second intervals, suggested it wasn’t going to be easy.

We lined up on the start, all 19 boats, and we were 7th to set off.  The first 1000m wasn’t too complicated, as the boats remained fairly well spread out.  It wasn’t until the second corner, half way through the race, when another team decided to under-cut us during the turn that it started to get a little ropey.  Some paddlers clashed with the head of their boat and then we stayed exactly level with them for the entire of the 500m straight, whilst overtaking another boat on the other side.

Given the speed and only a couple of metres between the boats, the combined bow wave was running exactly level with the gunwale – one wrong move and we were going to sink!  It was almost a relief as we got to the next corner and, with their inside line advantage, they passed us.  Only 500m to go and we paddled as hard as we could, crossing the line in a respectable 8 mins 55.95 seconds.  This was enough to get us a respectable 12th place overall. 

Saturday morning saw a ridiculously early start as we had to be at the race venue by 7.45, for our first race at 9am.  As the only heat with 6 boats, competition was going to be fierce.  We had no idea how we were going to fare against the other crews as the 2k race doesn’t necessarily give much indication of a team’s performance over short distances.

In a race format that is familiar from BDA events, we had to be in the top 2 in our race in order to miss out on the reps.  However this was wishful thinking and we soon found ourselves back on the water for rep 1.  This one wasn’t to go our way either, with the fastest team coming in exactly 4 seconds faster than us.
 

Luckily a few teams had been even slower, so we managed to save face and make it into the 13-17th place tail race.   As the slowest team going into the tail race, we hoped we could come somewhere other than last but didn’t have our hopes set too high.  It was a 5 boat race, and we were in lane 1. With no idea what was going on over in lanes 3 and 4 (crash!), we managed to excel ourselves and cross the line in first place in 52.01 seconds.  This got us an overall ranking of 13th in the 200m competition of 21 teams.

With racing over at lunch time, everyone had the afternoon free to investigate the sights of Budapest.  Some stayed to watch Thames and Amathus in their open competitions, but most of the crew headed up to Castle Hill and similar areas to check out the scenery.

So Sunday morning was the 500m competition.  After the 200m races on Saturday, we had raised our spirits and were starting to realise that we could hold our own against the other crews.  The racing was set for an even earlier start than the previous day, so we were all up ridiculously early to get to the race venue on time.

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In a brilliant team talk before the first race, Malc set out our expectations for the day.  We knew the major and minor finals (1-8th) were out of our reach, so our sights were set on the plate major final.  This would put us in competition for 9-12th place, and based on the previous 2 days we knew it wasn’t unrealistic.  To get there, we needed to be in the semis which meant we had to win our heat, or win a rep. 

With Sportive Club Master and Spreepoint coming in ahead of us, we knew it was into the reps for us.  Back on the water after quite a short break, the rep found us against DVSC and Schwarz who we had been comparable to for the rest of the weekend.  With only the rep winner going to the semis, it was going to be our hardest race of the weekend.  DVSC were good, very good, and as they crossed the line we knew we hadn’t won. 

However the crew manager had held back a small nugget of information – there was a runner up slot to go into the semis.  Half way through our warm down, with the official rep results still not released, we were amazed when Julie Doyle came over and told us to get straight back into boat marshalling as we had made it into the semis!  Cue some of the loudest cheers I heard all weekend, but there was no time for celebration as it was time to race!

This was a tall order, considering who we were up against in the semi – Hannover All Sports who won the 2000m, Neckerdrachen who won the 200m and Dunai who we paddled alongside for a large chunk of the 2000m.  That didn’t stop us trying our hardest, but as we fell off the wash from the faster crews we knew we didn’t have a chance at 1st or 2nd.

The final result was out and we’d got 4th place, a whole 14 seconds behind All Sports.  That put us into the plate major final, exactly where we’d been aiming for (although higher would have been nice!).  The last race of the weekend and we faced DragonClub, DVSC and Arrabona.  With no idea whether there might be medals up for grabs, we were going to try our absolute best, safe in the knowledge that the worst we could do would be 12th place overall.

We were in lane 4 and as we progressed down the course we could see DVSC and DragonClub taking a small lead but we remained level with Arrabona.  There was  everything to play for, considering there may be medals at stake.  As we crossed the line there was dissent amongst the team, nobody knew whether we had finished 3rd or 4th. 

While we were warming down, the announcement of the final results came over the tannoy – we were in 4th place, so no bronzeware (I still don’t actually know if there were actually medals for that race) but a very respectable 12th place overall!

The last afternoon for most of the crew and it was off to the Gellert thermal baths.  19 of the crew spent the afternoon relaxing in the sunshine, taking in the wave pool, outdoor Jacuzzi and indoor pools and steam rooms.  Then it was off to dinner where Jim negotiated a discount at a restaurant that managed to seat us all on one table!  There was plenty of time to start on the beers before the closing party…  Although in some people’s cases, I think less beer (and certainly less Black Bacardi) might have been better!

In order to preserve the team reputation I should stop there in the story.  To round it off, here are a few quotes and little snippets of genius from the team:

“I am very impressed with how we all gelled together last weekend, we really became a team, I had great fun but don’t tell them that it will ruin my image...” (Malc)

 “Although we did not win any medals the ECCC in Budapest showed that Henley Dragons could successfully compete against the best teams in Europe.” (Phil T)

“My memories of the party are a little hazy!!” (Malc)

 “For the 2k we were asked to load 'the red one', loading it, tying helm arm on, fixing spare paddles, pulling away, being called back only to find out we should have loaded the boat with the red 'one' and having to do the whole thing again. Wouldn’t it have been easier to swap the numbers??” (Julia)

"Henley, what is your problem?" in a Dutch accent (starter)

"Oh!, you're all there, are you ready, attention, GO!" in a Dutch accent (starter, again)

“I shall always remember Budapest fondly because:
1) We spent 5 joyous nights in a no star hostel while Amathus slummed it at the 5 star Gellert just up the road...

2) We decided to ignore the excellent public transport system of this thriving metropolis and walked 10 miles to dinner and back each night as part of our training...

3) But most of all, because we gave everything we had to each race and no one can ask for more than that!” (Jim)

Thanks to the entire team for putting in all the effort they could.  The full crew was:

Tom, Julia, Isobel, Malc, Abi, Phil K, Kirsty, Eleanor, Phil T, Rich, Ashley, Pam, Jim, Rob, Caralyn, Bharti, Big Steve, Nick, Dave B, James, Vicki, Dom, Emma and Dave S.