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127th Royal Canadian Henley Regatta

The Royal Canadian Henley Regatta, which occurred August 4-9, is "the" club regatta of the year in North America. Among the thousands of competitors racing that week, we were over 20 athletes from the Montreal Rowing Club.

The week of racing started with quite the insane conditions on the Tuesday with huge waves and on the course -- weather you don't even want to train in. Sculler after sculler arrived at the dock, after their races, with water filling their skiffs up to the brim. Of the more than 16 races Montreal had that day, Jonathan emerged a clear winner in his particular heat and continued on to the semi-finals the next day. He will finish it at the 4^th position.

On Wednesday, perhaps the shortest U23 open women's 2x in Henley history, Jessica and Angelica (averaging 5'2.5 and barely 130lbs), raced an admirable race in which they fell just out of semi-final contention. Among their race highlights included a near collision and even sightings of the Virgin Mary by one very exhausted rower.

The rest of the week saw Montreal racing in many semi-finals and finals with luckily no more mishaps or awful rowing conditions.

Notable achievements of the week:
·     All the lightweight under 23 (U23) men's pairs went on to the semi-finals - Ariel Sanchez and Adam Kingsland, David Ta Kim and Max Button, Evan De Jonghe and Brent Hoopkins.
·     Brent and Evan made the final of the U23 lwt pair and arrived 5th.
·     Nyssa Pohl was 5th in the Senior lwt 1x semi-final, hampered by some very annoying weeds on her fin.
·     Jessica Hermant and Alexandra Timoshenko surprised themselves by advancing to the semi-finals in the U23 1x. They placed 4th and 5th, respectively, in their semi.
·     Jonathan was 4th in the U23 lwt 1x semi-final.
·     David and Max made the semi-final in the U23 lwt 2x.
·     Marc-Antoine Desjardins, Jessica, and Nyssa all made the final for the 500m dash, with Marc-Antoine and Nyssa placing 3rd and Jessica, 6th.

And thanks to all the other club rowers who proudly struggle in all their heats: Ana Teodorescu, Megan Lydon, Natasha Caminsky, Kelly Donivan, Andrea Wilson, Mélanie Gabbana, Mara Edelman, Marie-Cléo Gravel-Lacroix, Claire Gowdy, Christian Dabrowski, Michael Ross, Shane O'Brien, Mario Patenaude and Dan Dyson.

The rowers at MRC would like to give a special thank you to everyone at the Boucherville Rowing Club, who despite being our greatest arch-nemesis, provided a much needed hand during our dash races!

ERA Regatta 2009

On July 4th, 2009, the most recent ERA regatta took place at Montreal's Olympic basin in Parc Jean Drapeau. This year's regatta was a great success, with over 300 participants. Despite inclement weather, races were held every 8 minutes from 8:30 am until 7 pm.

ORC, the Ottawa Rowing Club, was awarded the Comstock Trophy, having amassed the most points during the event. MRC, the Montreal Rowing Club, finished third. Congratulations to all participants (rowers, coxswains, coaches and supporters) from the various Canadian clubs!

To view the final results, please follow this link.

"We are grateful for all the volunteers and officials, to whom we say a giant THANK YOU. Among them, some people worked for over 10 consecutive hours, and did an impeccable job. At the end of the day, the competition concluded successfully despite the intense race schedule. It's a result of the quality of the organisation, which was excellent." stated Rejean Beauregard, president of the ERA's organisationnal committee. Once again, a GIANT thank you to all the volunteers who made the ERA 2009 happen!"