W3 and W2 down. W1: up. M2 and M1: row over.

W1 looking happy, having bumped City 4 on Ditton.

W3: Bumped on Ditton alas. Pic. Video.

W2: no report yet. Pic.

W1: bumped City 4 to go tenth; only one more to single-digits. Well done.

M2: rather more of them in the Waterman tonight, and they were looking much happier, having put the threat of spoons behind them with a gutsy row over. From the horse's mouth: "So a streadfast row over tonight. We held Aquaphobes nicely and they looked shattered by the finish. Another smooth start - we really have got those down to a tee now boys. They took a length out of us by the Plough but could not press home. We kept our style and rhythm beautifully - unlike last night. Will asked us to lengthen and push and we did. Never seen a Cox so excited to get a row over!" Video, with more of Jo's enthusiastic commentary. And from Will the cox (speaking on Friday): "Yesterday - it wasn’t the row over as such that got me so excited, but rather the way you guys raced; I think it was your best performance since I have been coxing you. The start was good, then we hit a pretty good rhythm after the outflow to start ourselves moving away. The focus was there when it was needed, particularly around corners where they appeared to get closer quite quickly (purely due to the fact that we have started cornering and they haven’t). Having watched the video their bank party was being extremely optimistic with their whistles - at times I thought they were a lot closer than they were, but top job for absorbing their pushes and stepping away. The best part for me was the first 2/3 of the reach where we pushed up the boat speed and hit a sweet rhythm, their whistles stopped and you guys were flying - that was what got me so excited. Today - very simple objective: give Champs spoons! For the past three days there have been crews above us that I know we could catch, the only problem was that they weren’t one station ahead - but today they are! Same attack, same control, and same length as yesterday. Don’t wait for the bump to come to you, make it happen."

M1: as always, bumps continues to surprise. Today, for the first time ever in my long and -ahem- illustrious bumps career, I was pretty sure I was going to have an unexciting row over: Tabs 3 would walk away ahead, and behind us City 3 had nothing extra to give. Both of these things happened, but what I failed to foresee was Tabs 3 failing to take Grassy in a blades-on-the-bank-need-a-restart type of way. Which left us suddenly going from 3 lengths off to half a length off. We didn't really know what was going on. I had a brief moment of worrying that we'd get so caught up trying to catch them we'd exhaust ourselves in their wash and get caught by City. But happily after we kept half a length down Plough reach, they pulled away down the reach, and City dropped back before having the decency to be bumped by Nines 2. Another might-have-been: had we pulled out all the stops at that point, we might well have got them. Or we might have fallen apart instead; so probably just as well. And tomorrow? We have someone new behind us. Nines are clearly faster than City; but we'd dropped City by the time Nines got them; so I'm quietly hopeful. Video from the Gut. Video from Jo (3:50 for Tabs crash).

Nothing to do with our club, but I really liked this pair of pix of Robs and Tabs1, from Wednesday: