Over the last few days, weeks and months, Broken Oars Podcast has highlighted incidents where clubs, crews and athletes have indulged in practices they shouldn't. After they reared their ugly heads again at 2022's Henley Women's Regatta, rather than reiterating the same points over and over on various Twitter feeds and conversations, we (by which I mean, I, the Northern One), decided to contextualise and record our response to what is, bluntly, cheating.

Trying to squeeze up on someone at the start of a Head Race and push the crew behind you away on the stagger is one thing as is making someone overtake you, but deliberately manipulating crews and entries for your own advantage, or not racing within the letter of the rules and the spirit of the sport is quite another - and the modern practice of saying 'you're only picking on us because we're x, y, z' has to stop too. We're better than that as a sport, and our mea culpas should be a damned sight better and more believable than Boris's.

This takes in a lot of history, and explains why I (and I'm pretty sure Lewin agrees with me) have responded to those events the way we have. Hopefully, this episode will stop us having to endlessly restate our position on the Twitter timelines; and ultimately lead to a restatement of our values as a sport and pursuit.

Get Some!