2019 Tulsa Rowing Foreign Tour – Blog Entry #5

The Tulsa rowing team is on an 18-day foreign tour to Venice, Italy, Bled, Slovenia, and Henley on Thames, England. The team will have some fun, as well as practice and compete in the Bled International Regatta (June 14-16) and Henley Women's Regatta (June 21-23). To document their adventure, six different rowers will blog about a three-day time period.

Today's entry is from Sydney Pirkle, a junior from Naperville, Illinois.

6/20/2019
The day started with a quick walk to the water and a nice long practice on the historic Henley River. For many boats competing in the regatta, this was the last water practice before time trials! The bows all worked on perfecting their steering down the course to make sure no wooden booms would be hit on race day. After practice, we ate at one of the many cafes in town and had a famous full English breakfast (lots of protein in the breakfast!). After that, we had some time to ourselves to check out the town and explore the many cute shops and festivals. We even found a chapel that dated back to 1204! The big event for today was the international reception at the Henley rowing museum. Everyone wore their blazers and we heard speeches from some Olympian's and Henley Women's Regatta champions. They told us some of the feelings they had on the line during their Henley races and empowered each competitor to embrace the moment and enjoy every stroke. After the speeches, we enjoyed a great pasta dinner provided by the museum.

6/21/2019-6/23/2019
IT'S RACE DAY!! The Championship 2-, Championship 4-, Aspirational 4-, and Championship 2x started their time trials on Friday. The Lightweight 2x's, Championship 4x and Aspirational 4x woke up for a quick practice Friday morning to prepare for their time trials starting Saturday morning. The purpose of time trials was to seed each boat. The boats go down the river head race style and the bracket for the heats were created based on the times. There was so much energy and excitement everywhere you went at this regatta! It was so cool to see the people from the town and all over world that came to watch. The feeling on the water was incomparable to any other regatta I have been to. The races went off and each boat navigated down the course. After each boat was seeded, the rowers prepared for the 1-V-1 elimination heats. This style of racing is different than we are used to. It's just you and the other crew fighting it out for 1,500 meters down the course. The other cool thing about this event is that fans line up down the entire length of the river. You can hear the Golden Hurricane fans cheering the entire race! On Sunday we all be cheered on Sophia [Camara] and Sarolta [Papp] in the Lightweight 2x as they raced in the championship and won! Reign 'Cane!

Thank you so much to the donors who made it possible for us to experience this high-level, international racing and the amazing culture of this event! I also want to give a huge shout-out to all our seniors who raced their last race in Tulsa gear this weekend. We love you and appreciate all that you have done for this program! And thank you to all the TU fans who came to this regatta or watched from home!

four rowers posing for a picture at the Henley Women's Regatta

2019 Tulsa Rowing Foreign Tour – Blog Entry #5

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Sydney Pirkle

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