Although only one FRA regatta took place this year, the attendance of 49 paddlers was in line with pre-covid numbers. All the clubs in the FRA sent teams, and it was also pleasing to see a small group  from Hemel.

The full results from the day's racing can be found on the Summer Series results page.

After missing an entire season due to the pandemic, it was good to see the Winter Series running again -  especially as this is 2021, the 40th anniversary of the series being formalised. It was therefore particularly appropriate that the start and finish marshals for the day were Ron and Alison Thorogood, winners respectively of the Senior Mens K1 and Senior Ladies K1 series trophies back in  the 1981/82 season!

The trend towards doubles racing continued, with 20 K2s  and one C2 entering Class 9. Women are increasingly well represented, with the gold, silver and bronze medals in Class 9 all going to mixed crews. There were also three all-female crews in this class.

The Mens Veterans race (Class 7) was the second biggest class with 16 entrants, so that taken together with Class 9, these two classes made up over half the competitors present.

Ali Kabeer from Wokingham, won Class 5 (u16 MK1) in a time of 44:43 and thus came quite close to beating the 5-mile course record for the Stortford race, which was set at 43:03 in 2010 by Lewis Duffield.

A total of 109 competitors took part, drawn from twelve different clubs. Despite sending a much smaller team than usual, Chelmsford were still dominated the event and won easily (210 points), with Stortford second (119) and Leighton Buzzard third (83).

The full race results are on the Winter Series results page. There are also a few photos of the race on Flickr here. The next race will be at Cambridge on 5th December.

Despite Stortford having to announce that it was unable to provide on-site parking for everyone this year, the opening race of the Winter Series still attracted 131 competitors. Ten clubs participated as teams, and 6 more were represented amongst the Independent entries.

Canoes were very much in evidence, thanks to a healthy 6 entries in the TC2 class, where numbers have been dwindling for the past few years.

One of the stand-out performances of the day came from Wokingham CC paddler Ali Kabeer paddling as an Independent, who smashed the boys K1 record for the short course with his time of 25:57.  The record previously stood at 27:52, set in 2013 by Tim Gannicott Porter of Chelmsford. Ali of course won gold in the u14MK1 class. See the updated list of course records.

The full race results are on the Winter Series results page. There are also a few photos of the race on Flickr here. The next race will be at Cambridge on 1st December.

The full results from the day's racing and for the series can be found on the Summer Series results page.

Emma Russell and James Walkington's (CLM) time of 56:26 in the 7 mile K2 race was not after all (as reported earlier in error) a course record for mixed K2 (that was set at 53:08 by Mark Wilkes and Kat Wilson in 2016), but was nevertheless an excellent time. 

Ten clubs were represented. Chelmsford were the winning team with Stortford 2nd and Leighton Buzzard 3rd. In the Dick Grieve table (based on performance by novice juniors only) the result also Chelmsford 1st and Stortford 2nd, but Leaside CC in third place. The full race results can be seen on the Winter Series results page.

The next race will be at Cambridge on 25th November - see Cambridge race details.

Six clubs attended the penultimate event of the Summer Regatta series. There were 500m and 200m K1 races and after the lunch break there were K2 races for those who still had the energy.

The full results can be found on the Summer Series results page.

There were 145 paddlers at this event with large fields for Class 1 (Senior K2) and Class 7 (Ladies K1 & Advanced C1). The largest number of boats was for Class 3 (Veteran Mens) - a record breaking 24 entries, of whom nearly half were SuperVets.

The next race will be at Herts Young Mariners Base at Cheshunt on Sunday 19th November - see the Cheshunt HYMB WS page for full details.

The full results can be found on the Summer Series results page.
Photos of the event taken by Chris Worrall can be found in his Flickr album.

Next Sunday Chelmsford will be hosting the third and final regatta of this year's series.

There were 156 competitors for the opening race of the 2016-17 Winter Series, in 126 boats. The senior K2 race on the long course proved especially popular, with a massive 23 entries.

It was lovely to see most of the usual faces, and we were particular pleased to welcome a small team from Norwich CC for the first time.

The Chelmsford team supplied two new course records on the long course. Dan Johnson & James Walkinton completed the 7 miles and 6 portages in 52:42, beating the previous best time of 54:19 set in 2014 by Mark & Peter Wilkes.  The Mixed K2 record of 57:28 (2015, Leanne Brown and Aaron Jordan) fell to Mark Wilkes and Kat Wilson, who finished in 53:08.  On the middle-distance course, Melissa Johnson came very close to equalling Vicky Surrage's record of 44:44 for Ladies K1 which has stood since 2007, by completing the 5 miles and 3 portages in 44:50.

GB Paddler Noah Dembele kindly came along to present the awards at the end of the day. After the medals for the day's racing came the presentation of the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place awards for the 2016 Summer Series as a whole, based on each paddler's best three performances in the four-regatta series (but with a minimum of two regatta entries to be eligible).

The full race results for the Stortford Regatta and the end of Series positions can be found on the Sprint Series Results page.

More photos from the day can be found in Angela's Flickr album, and (for FB friends of Chris Sze) Chris's FaceBook Album.

Many thanks to all the organisers and volunteers who have staged these regattas, and also the Team Leaders and paddlers who have turned out to support them. We hope to see you all again at the Winter Series Marathons which will kick off at Stortford on 6th November - see the Winter Series pages for details. If you sign up to the FRA mailing list you will be kept up to date on news about the Winter and Summer series.