Whilst the majority of Stratford upon Avon Boat Club were celebrating Silver Olympian Esme Booth’s return to her home club, Sunday saw Stratford Boat Club’s Masters’ rower take the long trip to West Norfolk for the epic long distance Great Ouse Marathon. The event currently the longest endurance river rowing event in the UK starts at the beautiful West Norfolk Rowing Club at Downham Market in Norfolk and winds it way to Ely in Cambridgeshire through glorious countryside for 21.5km and a total rowing day of 23km against the stream on the river Great Ouse.
This challenging bucket list event attracts clubs from all over the country with competitors from as far afield as Newcastle, Thames Valley, West Sussex and Southampton. Due to the long distance nature of the event particularly in single sculls where competitors are continually rowing for two hours, the standard is high with generally some of the best scullers in the country in attendance.
Stratford was represented by Tom Doherty for the second year running, competing in the Masters F age category single
sculls event with an average age 60 to 65 years for the second year running. With conditions set fair and a light head wind and light stream, racing commenced with the slowest category crews off first these being single scullers of various age groups and gender. With faster people starting behind, the emphasis was on establishing a good early pace and rhythm over the first part of the course to maintain race position. With a very bendy first part of the course catching people out, navigation skills were required to maintain a good river position and avoid the banks and reeds.
After 6km with the day heating up and the race pattern well established, 
faster scullers began to challenge those in front of them necessitating continual pushes to maintain position. With the welcome sight of the Ship Inn on the horizon being the halfway point of just over 10km, this found Stratford in a four way battle with faster and slower scullers at the same time as negotiating some of the tightest bends on the course. Plenty of by now painful leg pushes established some order with no major incidents as the course began to straighten out.
A long hot straight 6.5km section which never seemed to end brought competitors to the start of the Varsity Boat Race course held here during Covid and the final 5km stretch to the finish. By this time in the race competitors were beginning to concertina with slower scullers being caught and passed by faster ones leading to some tricky steering which, coupled with the presence of pleasure cruisers, also using the river made for an exciting if stressful last few kilometres and no let up until the finish as scullers gamely fought to hold their positions waiting for the finish hooter. A mixture of relief and pain signified the end of another gruelling contest
with only a final 1.5km row to the landing stages at Ely.
Said Tom Doherty, “I was very pleased with only my second competitive single sculling race up against some of the country’s most experienced scullers. I manged to hold a number of them off for the majority of the course which was very satisfying and I beat my previous years’ time which was my goal which made the pain at the finish worthwhile!”
Whilst Tom was going through the pain barrier on the Great Ouse, several members of Stratford’s adaptive squad were in Paris at the Paralympics cheering Team GB on to their multiple successes: some less lucky squad members had to make do with watching the action at the Paralympic Fanzone in London!
For media coverage, please see Stratford Herald page fifty two and Stratford Observer online https://www.stratfordobserver.co.uk/sport/rowing-stratford-boat-club-masters-athlete-competes-in-long-distance-ely-head-race