Rowing: Tribesmen event to show contenders

23rd March 2009

The Tribesmen event is the premier start-of-season time trial, and, coming as it does, at the tail end of the winter training regime, is a reliable predicter of likely championship contenders later in the year. The Head is a time trial which is run over the 5Km stretch of the Corrib between the lake and the city. Open to all boat types from the tiny single Sculls to the 60-foot Eights,and to a wide range of ages from 14-year-olds through the Seniors to the Veterans of uncertain age, competitors will be attracted from all corners of the country.

NUIG's Alan Martin and Cormac Folan will be featuring in their first domestic event since returning from Beijing, indeed their crew must be favourites for the main feature, the Men's Eights. They will also be in the hunt for the Men's Fours, but will be faced with a number of strong Dublin/Belfast composite combinations.

Local schools St Josephs ("Bish") and Col. Iognaid ("Jes") will be renewing a rivalry that goes back to the 1930's. While Bish have the historical advantage, the Galway lads will be competing with 2008 champions Carlow, and an interesting tussle is assured.

The Jes women will have to look no further than 100m down the Eglington Canal for their main competition - host club Tribesmen. The Tribes girls captured five national titles last season and will prove hard to beat.

One contest of particular interest will be between Tribesmen's Lisa Dilleen and Laura D'Urso of City of Derry. These have been the top two Junior-18 scullers of the year. Expect the Galway girl to prevail.

Galway Rowing Club will compete an Intermediate, the first such entry from that club for some time, and early seasonresults have been most encouraging to date. The two senior pairs of Stephens/Forde and O'Dowd/Whooley should also prove hard to beat.

The racing commences at 10:30 on Saturday morning and should be visible passing under the Quincentennial bridge at approximately 10:45. The second race is at 1:30pm and will be at the bridge at 1:45pm. The last race, the main event is at 4:15pm and can be viewed from 4:55pm.

Published in News From the Afloat.ie Archive

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