Glasgow Grouse and Sheffield Shuffle Team Racing
by Nigel Vick 30 Oct 16:52 UTC
26-27 October 2024
Glasgow Grouse winners Edinburgh Black © Nigel Vick
Both the Glasgow Grouse and the Sheffield Shuffle had the advantage of an extra hour in bed for their Sundays.
Glasgow would have taken more advantage of it had not Bardowie Loch been up to its usual tricks. However, the mirror calm of first thing in the mornings soon gave way to an increasing breeze and HLS racing moved on at a pace for the 23 teams involved. Two broken masts prompted a move to cut-downs around 3pm before the move to the cèilidh around 4.30pm.
Sunday was pretty similar, but without as big an increase in wind as had been forecast and the Race Officer continued with HLS for most of the day before going to sudden death quarter finals. These produced an all Edinburgh set of Semis with Edinburgh Pink v Blue and Black v Emirates Team Kickflip (technically not Edinburgh Uni but Alumni from other Edinburg Unis). Black came through 2:0 but Blue took an extra race to come through with a 2:1 score.
The Finals saw The Edinburgh Black team of Ewan Wilson, Julia Barnes, Adam Lockhart, Zeynep Otay, Emilia Russell & Harris Cartwright (photo) triumph over the Blues with a 2:0 win. In third place was Edinburg Pink with a 2:1 score.
The Sheffield Shuffle on the other hand had a brilliant weekend with sunshine, picturesque setting and a good team racing wind. The very competent team SUSC management gave the competitors 126 phase 1 races with semis and finals, unusually in some best winds of the weekend.
Semis were first to two wins with two teams first to that target in just two races. Too good!
The Finals between Royal London Foxes and a Sheffield and Loughborough Alumni team going under the SLUTS banner were closely fought with some crucial protest decisions. Again only two race were needed to produce a result with UKTRA'S own Committee Member, Paddy Whelan in with the winning spoils.
Sheffield Results:
1st Royal London Foxes
2nd Sheffield & Loughborough Universities
3rd York Black
4th Loughborough Pink