Hannah Warren, a second-year PhD student in the Duer Group, won the Women’s Lightweight Boat Race with her team from the Cambridge University Boat Club against the University of Oxford. The race was on 3rd April and hosted on a 6.8k long stretch of the River Thames between Putney and Mortlake. It was first raced by crews from Oxford and Cambridge University in 1829 and is now one of the oldest and most famous amateur sporting events.
Hannah said: “I learnt to row last year with the onboarding programme at Jesus College, my college, and they have a really good programme. We train 13 times a week so I mostly just row and do my PhD. Melinda, my supervisor, used to row so she is really supportive.”
She explained what it’s like to train with the boat club: “It’s quite an unusual sport because the entire year is working up to this race, there aren’t really tournaments like I’ve done with other sports. It’s the only event you think about; the 10 days before the race the team all stays in London to train.
“At the start of the race it’s all nerves, but as soon as we start rowing I go straight into my actionable rowing strategy and listening to the coxswain. Our cox, Lidya, is very calm which is a huge help. On the Thames there is a fast stream of water flowing within the river that is quite narrow and the boats are battling to reach it so she makes a lot of technical calls and subtle changes to give us an edge. Everyone is already stressed and she gathers us together and keeps us focused.
“For the second half of the race though, all I’m thinking is: ‘this is really hard work!’”
The team received a trophy, the Big Plate, a Blue,an award of sporting colours for competing at the highest university level along with a blazer. The lightweight team wears Cambridge blue blazers with a horizontal white stripe.
Outside of the river, Hannah studies the structure of collagen using solid state NMR to understand its properties and how it relates to diseases like fibrosis and cancers.
For next year, Hannah says: “I am planning on rowing next year! It’s a sport I’ve totally fallen in love with. Learning to row through colleges is often free or subsidised and gives the opportunity for lots of people to get involved in a sport which is often not very accessible. The Lightweight crew is very special because nearly all of us learnt to row at college. I am very grateful to the JCBC novice programme which taught me to row and to JCBC for financially supporting me through the trialling process for the Boat Race.”
The full crew was:
Cox: Lidya Acar (Wolfson, MPhil in Digital Humanities)
Stroke: Bella Munro (Peterhouse, BA History)
7: Hannah Major (Pembroke, BA Medicine)
6: Helena Olandi (Hughes Hall, Medicine)
5: Jay Manson-Whitton (Peterhouse, Mmath)
4: Zara Bek (Trinity, BA Classics)
3: Olivia Wright (Emmanuel, BA Biological Nat Sci)
2: Hannah Warren (Jesus, PhD Chemistry)
Bow: Lauren Allegretti (Lucy Cavendish, PhD Clinical Neuroscience
