coxmate New to the Head of the Yarra?··Coxmate is here to offer helpful tips to coxswains and coaches of coxes.··Enter our new guest post series on steering major race courses.
The Head of the Yarra is·Australia's big head race.··It will be held this year on November 26th, so the time to start training is upon you.··In this article, David McGragh explains the best way to steer the Head of the Yarra and highlights a couple of the tougher corners and some good preparation techniques for the race.
The Head of the Yarra is a tricky course to steer, even for locals. It helps to know as much about the river as possible and so I'd always recommend if you can to steer the course before racing it. At the very least, jump onto Google Maps and have a look at the corners and the location of bridges and start to devise the course you want to steer. I used to measure distances because I liked to know how far between corners and bridges and what distance was remaining in the race.
I remember the first time I did the race with Mercantile. We were unable to row the whole course in the eight so I jumped into a single and rowed the whole course myself in order to refresh my memory of the course and ease a few nerves. There is a path you can ride that follows the river but it's always best to see it from the water. You may want to find someone who can drive you in a tinny or tag along with a club/school crew as they train.
All the crews start from the city boat sheds and race upstream. The start will have many rows of four crews, across the river, before they call you forward to start at 10 second intervals. There is a 5 minute gap after every eight crews in order to reduce congestion. It's essentially a running start with the timing started once you past the Judges Box.
Conditions and Crews
Generally there's little stream on the Yarra unless it has rained heavily in the preceding days. The stream still makes a difference to the racing and the time it will take to complete the course. In recent years they have tried to time the starts so everyone has the tide to reduce the influence this has on the results.
It is important to know as much as possible about the crews that are starting around you, this information will help you in devising you race tactics. The first 3 km of the Yarra are nice and open with sweeping bends and is conducive to overtaking whereas the second half of the Yarra is narrower with tight bends which makes it much more difficult to overtake. So try and do as much overtaking as you can before the “Big Bend” which signals the start of the tight corners.
During the first half of the race it is a good idea to use the bridges, as well as the other crews, to help keep your crew focused and motivated. The straights are long and the corners are fairly easy so the bridges help to break up the race and are a good time to change the crews focus.
In the second part of the race I generally have a structure for how, and what, I call down each straight. This will depend on how well my crew is travelling and what they need to focus on at that particular point.
The Big Bend
By far, the hardest part of The Head of the Yarra in the ‘Big Bend’, it is basically a U-turn and it's just before half way. Many crashes occur here so it is defiantly a good point to watch the race from. If you can't practice on the whole river I defiantly recommend to try this corner. It is quite important that the crew and Cox devise a method of getting around it before the race. Things to take note of when practicing are; when you start turning, what angle the boat is at before you approach the corner and what you crew will do to turn quickly. How you approach the corner is as important as what you do when you get there. I suggest not cutting the slight curve to bow side too much on the entry to ‘Big Bend’ as it could put you on a bad angle for the approach.
After “Big Bend” the river is narrower and has short straights and sharp corners all the way to the finish. In terms of steering this section, you need to do it a bit like a race car driver and try to reduce the sharpness of every corner by starting wide and turning as little as possible. There is a compromise, however, as you want to steer the shortest course as possible so be careful. This is where Google Maps or practicing the course comes in handily as you will know where the apex of each corner is, how wide to approach it and how hard to steer.
The last corner is one of the hardest because it is very sharp and quite tight on the exit. You should start to think about the wind for the line as you exit this corner – it is less than 1 km to the finish from there. The level of your crew will decide how early to start stepping for the line, strong crews will start straight out of the corner where as weaker crews should wait till the finish line is in sight, with a couple of hundred meters to go.
Hopefully you will get to the finish line safe and sound, either way the Head of the Yarra is a tremendous amount of fun (for a Cox).
Please let me know of any· This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it you have, and if this works for you!
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Read·Preparing for the Head of the Yarra #1·and Head of the Yarra #2
