Give me eight of the best

Great Britain’s annual Head of the River Race has a powerful twist this year. Some of the top scullers in the world are racing together in an eight. Dubbed the Great Eight, the boat is the brainchild of British coach Bill Barry.

Barry, who coaches Great Britain’s top single sculler, Alan Campbell, has brought together Tim Maeyens (BEL), Marcel Hacker (GER), Mahe Drysdale (NZL), Olaf Tufte (NOR), Ondrej Synek (CZE), Iztok Cop (SLO), Campbell and Andre Vonarburg (SUI) who replaces an injured Lassi Karonnen (SWE).

Apart from Cop (2000 Olympic Champion in the double), these are the athletes that made up the top places in the men’s single at the Beijing Olympics and Barry is keen to answer the question, do scullers make just as good sweepers? Barry believes the answer is ‘yes’.

It has taken Barry three years to bring this crew together and the eight staged a trial run earlier this week against the Cambridge University crew that will race at the end of the month in the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race. The race was two by 2000m, with Cambridge winning the first by a length and the Great Eight winning the second by just under a length.

“Basically they are the best rowers in the entire world,” said stroke of the Cambridge eight Silas Stafford. “How cool is this, we get to line up against this super eight.”

“Maybe I expected them to be like track sprinters. Really egotistical guys, self obsessed,” said Stafford, “but they’re surprisingly normal.”

Stafford noted that the Great Eight rated a couple of pips higher than Cambridge and were incredibly aggressive.

Dutch Olympic Champion Nico Rienks had a similar view to Barry. Rienks, who won gold at the 1988 Olympic Games in the double, believed that the fastest eight would be made up of the best single scullers. Rienks put together a Dutch eight for the 1996 Olympics. They won gold.

The Great Eight will race on the River Thames, London, in the Head of the River Race on 21 March.

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