Thames give Dutch a scare

NEWBURY’S Katie Metalli and her Thames crew capped a trio of early spring races with more success at the Heineken Roeivierkamp in Amsterdam.

This was the 52nd year of the event which is held on the River Amstel right in the heart of The Netherlands capital.

Similarly to the British Women’s Head of the River where Thames were first senior club just a week earlier, the Roeiveierkamp attracts all of the home nation’s top clubs, but is held over two days across four distances.

In Olympic year the Dutch national squad also takes part, which is normally seen as a way of showing off the team as a “thank-you” to the nation before they head off to the Games in Paris at the end of July with this year’s women’s eight crew being of exceptional high level with no fewer than six world champions and five Tokyo Olympic medallists aboard led by the formidable Veronique Meester.

While all the domestic teams effectively compete for second place, the honour being “top” elite crew is very much there and it was the mighty and favourites Nereus who took first blood behind the Dutch eight in the opening 2500m race with Thames just 0.8 of a second behind.

With victories over Cambridge and at the Women’s Head over the previous few weeks, this is a quality Thames boat.

And it soon became evident that they were just blowing off the cobwebs from travelling from England on the morning of the event and in the second race, the shorter 250m, easily reversed the result against Nereus, beating them by a second, less than a second behind the Netherlands crew.

This shocked the Dutch team into action and on Sunday morning came back for the longest race of the weekend and stormed to a clear victory in the 5km, heading Thames by 44 seconds.

Metalli’s crew, however, once again got the better of Nereus who were a further six seconds adrift.

This meant that going into the final race Metalli and Thames were in the final two and had a side-by-side race against the national squad.

The Thames crew’s main target this year is Henley Royal Regatta which follows that format and the final race proved to be far from the expected procession for the Dutch women.

With Metalli sitting at the head of the boat’s “engine room” in the six seat, Thames strength came to the fore as they finished just 3.8r seconds behind.

Nereus won their head-tohead edging local rivals Aegir in the third/fourth place race.

Having beaten all the British domestic crews the previous week and beating all the Dutch crews at the Heineken, it is looking good for Thames as they now go back into training, not racing again until May.

Metalli has been in this position before with her previous club in 2022 where Tideway Scullers were dominant from September through to March before the wheels came off in the latter part of the season.

Coach Tom Mapp will also not take anything for granted including boat selection as the Thames B crew also had a superb weekend by winning all of their races in the club category to make it a Dutch double and all 16 rowers must fancy a shot at a third successive Henley title for the club.