Snap your fingers. Blink an eye. Flick the light switch. You might get an idea of how close it was, how close the M5 women – the super crew that’s into the third and final year of a three-year plan – came to bettering a 15-year-old record Wednesday morning on Quidi Vidi Lake.
Wearing yellow and black and rowing in the Pomerleau, M5 re-wrote history at the historical 200th Royal St. John’s Regatta with a new course record of 4:56.10 in the Atlantic Lottery female amateur race, the first women’s race of the day.
OZ-FM held the previous record, dating back to 2003 with a time of 4:56.70.
It was that close.
“We knew we were definitely close (to the record),” said M5 No. 1 oar Amanda Hancock, who joins stroke Katie Wadden, Alyssa Devereaux, Jane Brodie, Nancy Beaton, Amanda Ryan, cox Dean Hammond and coach Bert Hickey in the Regatta history books.
“We were waiting for what felt like an eternity at the finish line for the Regatta Committee to call out from the timing tower to let us know if we got it (the record) or not.
“When they called out the time, everybody just went nuts.”
Last week, in a practice spin for time, M5 set an unofficial course record time of 4:55.
Things weren’t so joyous surrounding the Outer Cove men’s team, despite cracking an 8:55.90 in the first dash of the day, en route to winning the NTV Satellite Network men’s amateur race.
It’s the third-fastest time ever recorded on Quidi Vidi. But judging by the reaction of stroke Brent Hickey, Brent Payne, James Cadigan, Dan Cadigan, Mark Perry and Colin Stapleton, they may as well have rowed an hour.
The Outer Cove boys weren’t completely tore up, but they certainly weren’t jumping over the moon.
That’s because their shot at the course record of 8:51.32, set in 2007 by Crosbie Industrial Services (Brent Hickey and James Cadigan, by the way, were on that team), came up short And on a pretty good pond, no less.
“Obviously our goal is to break the record,” said Hickey. “We didn’t really want to say that all year. So we’re a little disappointed.
“At the same time, it was a hell of a row, so we can’t discount that.”
This evening at 6:30, M5 returns to improve upon their record, while Outer Cove gets another chance at Regatta history at 7 p.m.
