This document contains some examples of coxing and bank partying during CRA town bumps. The bumps committee and coxing reps are using these as examples to help coxes for future events and are in no way intending to offend the crews or coxes involved. Please contact the bumps committee if you have any questions
Past Town Bumps
Drone 2016: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUrBRno24z8
At 1:29 - good post-bump crew reaction - good control from coxes
At 1:43 - how close a following crew might be after you’ve bumped out
At 2:47 - 1st post reach - 2 bumps happening and blocking the river with a crew coming up behind. We don’t see what happens/how quickly they get cleared but you can see that a lot of decisions need to made in a short space of time and how important it is to keep control of your crew AT ALL TIMES.
2018 MDiv2 crash at First post - City M7 boat sandwiched by a crew who didn’t look ahead: ttps://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XDxMOflCmZk
City M7 DO NOT ROW ON but pull in very quickly and the City M8 bow is caught inside their stern.
The City M8 cox tries to get their 7 seat to back it down, but the bow is now caught under the concrete overhang.
Despite the shouts from the Bank, the chasing Champs boat does not stop. They hold it hard about two strokes off City M8. It looks like from the video that they had been bumped as a hand goes up. You can see what happens. The Cantabs boat chasing them ALSO doesn’t stop and then ploughs into the strokeside blades of City 8, hitting the cox. The Champs boat is impaled on the 7 rigger of City 8.
Firstly – let’s all be grateful that no one was hurt.
So – what should have happened?
1) The Acknowledgement could have been out to the side and much more definite
2) City M7 could have rowed on until they were well out of the way –– stopping rowing and pulling in immediately gave City M8 no where to go
3) The bank party weren’t quick enough to get off their bikes and pull City M8 in / get their stern out from under the concrete
4) Champs should have easied much sooner and should CERTAINLY not have been going for the inside of the corner. (From the 99s perspective from opposite the Champs cox didn’t look ahead at all in spite of 3 crews and coxes shouting at them to watch out. There is a failure by the BPs here too to make the cox aware of what was ahead.
5) Cantabs ditto – if they had held it hard with their bow on Champs’s stern (which they should have done) how come they were still going past City on the strokeside side?
The key lesson from this is that one member of the bank party MUST be with the cox and letting them know what is going on. Bank parties are there to keep people safe. This whole thing unfolded in around 15 seconds – prompt and decisive action is needed. Many of the things that happened in this video (pulling in quickly, assuming people will get out of the way) happen every Bumps, and nothing comes of it. Unfortunately, when you put them all together in a sequence like this, it’s dangerous and could really have hurt someone.
Town Bumps 2012 Wednesday M2 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XjtKtri2SM
(Bumps can be WET!)
An example of how little time there is to make decisions but when it all goes well, everything happens in the right order and racing isn’t impeded.
In first 2 mins-ish you can see how close crews can be to each other without a bump happening by the Plough
At 2:37 - 4 crews all in contact/have cover by Grassy. There is a poor concession from 32 (outside hand on outside of corner so following cox would not have been able to see it). Crew 33 cox goes for impact that could have gone quite wrong - luckily it works out well as both 33 and 32 are on the far side of the river. Cox 34 takes a good tight line so is well clear when 32/33 bump out and stop rowing. This also shows how important it is to keep the line before the Plough (when you don’t have to make contact to get the bump).
Town Bumps Tues 2015 - WDiv3 - https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=mTBGAw7opnE
An example of how quickly racing can go from clear run to chaos across the river and through the speed at which things happen compared to the speed at which you can steer a slow boat.
Basically Radegund were very slow and then hit First Post corner skewing them. The boat that bumped them pushed them straight across First Post into the gut.
The crews behind then get caught up in it all with Robs making it around (just) and Cantabs behind them going straight into the bank at the holt. The coxes maintain their control and keep their crews rowing until they clear the river so the following crews arrive as the river clears. The following crews row through ok but Nines don’t know that they’ve actually bumped the Cantabs crew who are parked on the bank as they are racing through. We can’t see what happened but we do know that Cantabs appealed to Race Control about being impeded and were awarded a row over while Nines were bumped by the crew behind. You may not get awarded a row over but it is important to take any appeals, issues, concerns AND YOUR BUMP to race control (get your BP to do it - only park up near the beer tree if you have been told to by Marshals!)
2011 Mens Div1 - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NZV1DtdVbKE&t=23s
At 1:00 - A good example of how two experienced crews can still get it wrong. City are bumping Nines on the inside of Grassy. The City cox was fined for not stopping soon enough when they bumped and you can see the Nines cox swivelled in their seat shouting that they have conceded. It’s really important that your bank party lets you know if the crew in front has acknowledged. If you are in this position don’t be afraid to ensure you have the most visible hand up and out to the side (change hands if you have to and can do so safely), turn your cox box up and tell the chasing crew you’ve acknowledged but also keep control of your crew and keep them rowing until you are free of the other boat.
At 3:00 a crew goes wide around the corner and are caught by the chasing crew. The cox concedes very late (looks like they have considerable overlap) and ends up back in the middle of the river impeding the crew behind the one who bumped them. Luckily, that impeded crew looks like the last crew in the division so it doesn’t seem to cause a disaster but if the bumped cox had held control of the direction of their boat, conceded earlier and stayed in charge of their crew they would have been able to safely park up with little impact on the crew not involved on their bump.
Don’t forget, the last crew racing still have a chance at an over-bump and it’s not your job to decide if they can make it or not. Stay in control of your crew, concede clearly and in reasonable time and clear the river quickly.