Simon Cole (1978) writes:
2024 marked the 15th year in which a Billygoats crew has taken part in the Rhine Marathon with a break only during lockdown.
The crew was similar in makeup to the previous year with Clive Woodman (1977), Neil Gardner (1977), our master analogist Roly Beevor (1977) (“imagine you are pushing back against a barn door” being the theme for 2024) and Simon Cole. Once again, we were expertly steered and corralled by our very own Billygoat on the Rhine, Wolfgang Wacke.
The conditions for the race could hardly have been better with clear, bright weather, what little wind there was blowing from the optimum quarter and a raging stream. Our boat this year was built more for comfort than for speed, the only slight speed-limiting factor.
We sculled steadily through the race. As always on the Rhine, a particular challenge is maintaining effective technique through the wash created by the commercial traffic on the river and in bouncy conditions our boat Albatros sometimes behaved more like a bucking bronco.
We were pleased with our finishing time of 2h 27m 30s for the 42 kilometre course which placed us 6th out of 8 in our Masters G group, 10th out of the 21 overseas crews taking part and 120th out of the total of 164 crews.
We had held our traditional training weekend per year in Cambridge shortly before the race. We were very grateful to Tony Moule for making the Adrian Tollett available to us for the weekend (a touching reminder for those of who had rowed with Adrian in the previous Fairbairns) and to Pok-man Ho for coxing us on a River Cam teeming with other users.”
Neil added:
And of further note, this year’s stern three were the same as sat in the 1980 May’s 1st Boat!
Billy Beef!
If only we had a photo!