College Record 2014

Waiting for Jesus: winning the 1995
Christchurch Novice Regatta
by Richard Holland, Captain of Boats 1996–97
It’s hard to imagine now, but in the 1990s the Boat Club struggled. Strangely,
during this period, the College was always full of experienced, tall rowers, but they
all seemed to find excuses why the crew was not good enough for them, or why
their honour had been slighted, or that they had a funny feeling in their toe, or that
they needed to write their thesis (the least acceptable excuse). This generally left
the Torpids first eight full of novices, and only short guys remained to fill up the
Summer Eights crew, leaving us generally running as fast as we could just to tread
water. However, there were some bright spots, and one of them actually came about
as a consequence of such a mass desertion. 1995 had been a particularly bad year,
but incoming Captain Lars (‘Jumping Higher’) Wulf decided rather sensibly to get
cracking on novices as soon as possible, and take advantage of Wolfson’s graduate
status to utilise the quiet conditions on the Isis during summer to persuade new
talent into the club. I was one such sucker.
I had arrived at Wolfson to do my DPhil the year before, armed with the knowledge
that rowing was far too hard work and involved early mornings, so I was not taken
in by the hard sell at Fresher’s Week. I was also captain of the squash team and
a linchpin in the cricket team, so did not see how I could abandon these for the
absolute dedication that rowing appeared to require. I had not, however, bargained
for my office mate (and later co-Boat Club captain) Theresa Burt taking up rowing,
and every minute telling me how great it was. As a scientist, I felt I had no option
but to collect the evidence myself to demonstrate that this was clearly not the case.
So it was that I signed up for Lars’s summer novice training.
Evening outings and warm summer evenings eased us in gently, and by the time
term started and the rest of the novices arrived we had a core of four rowers (Phill
Biggin, myself, Kartsten Heide and Derek Kennett) who would make up the stern
four. We were joined by Rob Wills, Bill Steel, Francesco Gonzalez and Chris
Russell. Jo Perkins, our cox, had the kind of accent that made the Queen sound
common, but its authority had us at her beck and call. Lars’s contribution was one
of the toughest land training programs that Wolfson had seen for quite a while, and
its circuits became legendary for his cries of ‘Jumping higher’ and ‘Jumping even
higher than before’. He also took no prisoners on the river, and I still remember his
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