2007 South Australian Schools' Head of the River

The regatta was conducted on 31st March 2007 was hosted by Pulteney Grammar School.

The following report from Phil Manglesdorf provides details of the regatta.

St Peters College and Walford Anglican School won their Head of the River races in an impressive display of top class schools rowing racing on a perfect day for competition at West Lake Saturday. For St Peters College it was their third title hat trick for winning the Gosse Shield three years in a row but this was the hardest of those three title wins with few experts tipping them to win before the race.

The ideal water suited the big St Peters schoolboys who raced the best race of their season over the 2000metre A. M. Ramsey International Regatta course. Prince Alfred College led out of the start and had half a metre lead after 500 metres ahead of Pembroke with St Peters a similar small distance back in third place. By the half way mark PAC and St Peters were level in front with the 2007  State Champions, Pembroke, only a metre back third, still in close contention.

St Peters raced the third quarter of the race as the “championship quarter” to take the lead by about half a boat length with 500 metres to go and then turned on their undoubted power with a superb timing and bladework to race away from a talented field and win by clear water. Pembroke finished fastest and overtook PAC but could not catch the St Peters boat.

In the girls title race for the Florence Eaton Cup there was a similar close start with Walford about a metre in front of  Wilderness after 500 metres raced and the rest of the six boat field still all in close contention.

Walford still held a slender lead at half way from Wilderness but they were able to increase that lead and take control of the race in the next quarter to have a clear lead with 500 meres to go. Walford showed the field a clean set of blades over the last quarter of the race as they swept away to a big win whilst Seymour College stormed home fastest and overtook Wilderness to grab second place by just 0.12 seconds.

Walford also won the girls first fours and St Peters also won the boys second eights.

Wilderness won the girls second eights and year 10 quad sculls.

Pembroke won the Cudmore Cup for boys first fours whilst Scotch College won both the boys and girls year 9 quad sculls.

Unley High won the year 10 boys quad sculls for the Menz Cup when Pembroke, who finished first, were disqualified because their coxswain was under minimum weight.

Perfect conditions saw a near record crowd of about 5000 watch what was the 30th running of the annual event at West Lakes.

A full copy of the program can be found through this link.