A breathtaking indoor rowing challenge between the top 6 UK university rowing clubs.
In the 1950 Boat Race, Lord Snowdon, then Tony Armstrong-Jones coxed the Cambridge crew to victory over Oxford. This event will celebrate the 60th anniversary of that race and will raise funds for Lord Snowdon’s charity, The Snowdon Award Scheme which provides grants to students with a physical or sensory disability, to help them complete further or higher education or training.
When and where
The Snowdon Rowing Challenge will take place on Friday 5th March 2010 at the Porchester Hall in London. It will be the finale of a major event celebrating Lord Snowdon’s 80th birthday, his charity’s work, and the launch of The Snowdon Alumni.
Who is taking part?
The top six university boat clubs have all enthusiastically agreed to take part in the challenge. They are:
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Each club will provide a team of eight oarsmen. Half will be current students and half prestigious alumni. In view of the profile of the event and the highly competitive nature of the sport, each club is looking to provide the best possible team. So our rowers will include 3 current Olympic champions - Andy Hodge (Oxford), Pete Reed (Oxford) and Steve Williams(Oxford Brookes) who won Gold in the 2008 Bejing Olympics as well as past Olympic champion Steve Trapmore (Imperial College) and three times World Champion Alex Partridge (Oxford Brookes)!
The challenge
Each team will have an ergo (rowing machine) on which they will race as a relay team. The race will last for 20 minutes 15 seconds, which was Cambridge’s winning time in the 1950 race. Film of Lord Snowdon’s Boat Race will be shown on big screens alongside the digital read-outs of distances travelled by each competing team.
The race will be fun, noisy and highly competitive: a great spectacle. The winning team will be presented with a glass challenge trophy in the form of a rowing blade.
The rowing community at each university will help to raise sponsorship for their teams in advance of the event.
For more details
The Challenge is being organised by Dr Hugh McLeod, who received an award from the charity in 1988 and coxed for the University of London Boat Club in 1988/9. Please contact Hugh for further information (07890 145339 or alumni@snowdonawardscheme.org.uk ).