RowingRelated

This week's pair of featured videos comes to us from Hammersmith Bridge, London, where Dickie Bannenberg was kind enough to camp out for the Head of the River Fours over the weekend. The videos show the first 120 crews between them—a field that included a number of Olympians, national team members (from various countries), and sterling results on the Tideway. The talk of the town following the race was the performance of the Oxford and Cambridge crews competing—the Light Blue and Dark Blue men and women all turned in strong races over the Boat Race course (albeit in reverse), setting the stage for the biggest and best Boat Race of them all this spring, with the women's programs competing over the same distance and historic stretch of the Thames as the men for the first time. So far, it looks like the Dark Blues are well positioned to repeat their dominant performances last year, with the top crew from OUBC (stroked by 2012 Olympic bronze medalist and 2014 world champion...

This weekend features a ton (tonne) of racing over long courses from the U.S. to Europe, with the Head of the River Fours taking over the Tideway earlier today, the Head of the Hooch in Chattanooga, Portland's Fall Classic , the Newport Autumn Rowing Festival in Southern California, the Head of the Lake in Seattle , and many more. We'll have reaction and analysis for all of the above coming up over the next few days, but for now, here are some useful links and updates for Saturday and Sunday. Good luck everyone! A photo posted by University of London Boat Club (@ulbc)  on Nov 11, 2014 at 12:44am PDT

This week's video comes to us from the Thames, where the 2012 Head of the River Fours took place over the weekend, showcasing some of the top international and club athletes in the UK battling to begin a new quadrennium with a bang. The video shows the first 52 crews coming through the starting queue, led off by Leander Club's elite men's quad, who repeated as champions by just over two seconds ahead of Tideway Scullers in a time of 17:51.0. Oxford and Cambridge also had crews on the water, facing off for the first time, albeit not in match-race style. This time, Oxford's Elite Coxed Four bested bested their rivals, with Oxford's Isis II (a crew that included GB Olympic men's eight stroke Constantine Louloudis, and Canadian Olympic silver medalist Malcolm Howard ) placing seventh overall to CUBC's 11th, though Cambridge I (featuring GB Olympic bronze medalist George Nash ) crossed the finish just five second back of the Dark Blues. For complete resu...