Oodles Of Power

TigerBlog was in attendance at the Henley Royal Regatta a year ago.

This time around, he was watching it on the Henley's videostream, which was carried on YouTube. 

As you can probably guess, it wasn't the same as being there. What it did do was take TB back to being on the side of the river, dressed in his Stewards' Enclosure mandated jacket, tie and hat. It reminded him of all of the traditions that go on around the racing that make the regatta even more special than it already is.

One of those, of course, is Pimms. What is Pimms? Well, TB isn't really sure. 

TB is not much of a drinker. For his lifetime, he's consumed way more Yoo-Hoo than he has alcoholic beverages. He did, though, have a few Pimms at Henley last year. As it turns out, Pimms has some gin in it but not too much, which explains why TB was able to drink them without getting loopy.

Anyway, the commentary on the broadcasts was awesome. It was distinctly British, which is wildly different than distinctly American.

While American broadcasting is often a race to see who can get closest to the line or who can come up with the hippest new phrase — TB thinks this started with "score the basketball" — English broadcasters are more of a race to see who can sound the most fun to watch a game with, which is sort of the better way of doing it.

TB has no idea who the announcer was who said it, but he did hear this as Princeton pulled away for a win:

"Princeton are rowing with oodles of power." By the way, the British use the plural for a team's location, as opposed to the singular that is used in America, where that sentence would have been "Princeton is rowing with oodles of power."

Of course, had it been in America, the phrase "oodles of power" would never have made an appearance. Oodles. What a great description.

Is "oodles" a unit of measure on the erg machine? "How'd you do today?" "Great. I beat my oodles record."

The 2024 version of the world's oldest regatta — and one of the best sporting events you could ever hope to attend — ended Sunday. Princeton sent three heavyweight boats to England came away with a championship (first varsity 8 in the Ladies' Challenge Plate), a runner-up (the 2V in the Temple Challenge Cup) and some valuable experience for the underclass boat (the 3V in the Temple Challenge Cup, who won its first race before falling in its second race).

Added up, and Princeton's three boats were a combined 8-2 in their 10 total races in the head-to-head single-elimination format.

It takes oodles of power to be able to do that.

Almost as impressive as the racing itself was the photography that row2k.com's John Flynn provided for Princeton. His shots completely captures both the intensity of the racing and the beauty that is Henley. 

None of the shots he sent better spoke to that than this one:

That pretty much tells it all, no? 

It was a whole week of photos like that. And they culminated in the celebration shots for the 1V championship, with all of the emotions that went along with the victory.

One of TB's favorites was the one of Princeton head heavyweight coach Greg Hughes as he held up a trophy. Hughes, himself a former Princeton rower, runs a program that has an extraordinary team culture, one that enabled him to assemble the entirety of his top three boats to come to Henley.

If you think that's easy, it's not at this time of year, especially with recent grads. 

Anytime TB spoke to him during the week, Hughes stressed the overall experience that the event brought to his rowers, how supportive the alumni have been, how thankful he is to the seniors for the role they have played in maintaining the program culture. 

He also signed all of his texts with "Go Tigers!"

Of course, he is as competitive as it gets, so winning was a great accomplishment, one that brought great joy, as you can see here:

Yeah, there aren't too many better ways to tell the story of Princeton's week at Henley than that.