A long long day

Josh returned from his school trip to CERN in Geneva at 1am, and Tom and I were up at 5am to head off to Bedford Sprint regatta. I was tired even before the day started! This picture is of Tom's friend Charlie in her scull awaiting the start of her race.

Tom has raced once in a single scull and it didn't go particularly well - in fact he got rather wet. That was over a year ago, and now he just needs to crack it… so he was signed up in two events J15 boys and Novice men - seven races in 7 hours…..

He did tremendously getting through to both finals. Beaten by a very strong Bedford sculler in the junior event, and then found himself up against a schoolmate, another Tom, who rows at Falcon - some 50 metres from City clubhouse. They posed for photos before the final and I went with the other Tom's mum to cheer them on at the finish. It was a good exciting race, very tight until… SPLASH.

My lovely Tom, the Capsize King, hit a buoy and going flat out wasn't able to balance and fell in. The other Tom, a true sportsman and gentleman, stopped racing, whilst my Tom got back into his boat. They both had wanted to win, but through a good race not an opponent capsizing.

My Tom refused to get in the rescue boat, climbed back into his scull, put his head into his hands and sobbed for a moment before doggedly finishing the race. As a mum it was hard to watch his heaving shoulders and not be able to go to him. Both boys got a round of applause from the crowds afterwards.

Our coach, with thirty years experience said he'd never seen an opponent stop like that, nor a capsized sculler climb back in and finish a race. True sportsmen, both of them and their mums were very proud. My Tom's confidence took a severe knocking until lots of girls came over to hug him to cheer him up and he started to see the positive side of things.

Despite the capsize he did seven strong races and has made huge progress. Which is good as next weekend he'll compete at the British National Championships where last year he won silver in the double sculls in a tremendously exciting nailbiter of a race and his quad set a new British record. His aim in a single, however, is not to capsize. Fingers crossed!

We arrived home in time for the second half of the footie final - 14 hours after we'd set out with (in my case) just 4 hours of sleep - I'm exhausted.