The Rowing Victoria State Championships will take place this weekend at Ballarat’s Lake Wendouree. This year, for the first time, to accommodate the regatta’s growing number of entries, the Men’s open eight, alongside the other elite open and underage events, will be held on Friday instead of Saturday. This event sees Melbourne University’s open eight face off against the Mercantile open eight. The open eight is always an exciting event to watch, given the longstanding rivalry between the neighbouring clubs.
Melbourne University (Composite)
The Melbourne University crew is a younger crew featuring mostly U23 athletes, alongside senior athletes Patrick Rocek and Rohan Lavery. Patrick, in bow seat, a former lightweight rower, who most notably won the 2022 World Championships as the stroke of the Italian lightweight quad. The boat is stroked by Rohan Lavery, who has competed for numerous Australian senior teams internationally, including being the reserve for the Tokyo and Paris Olympic Games, and is soon to return to the men’s National Training Centre. The Melbourne Uni athletes are joined by Samuel Forbes from the University of Queensland Boat Club and Joshua Wilson from UTS, who are in Ballarat to race the pair with Tom Foley and Winston Hooper, respectively. Tom, Winston and Joshua all represented Australia last year as part of the men’s four at the U23 World Rowing Championships, where they placed fourth. Sam has also represented Australia in the Coastal Rowing World Championships. The crew is also joined by U23 athlete Lachlan Idle, who represented Australia in the eight at the U19 World Rowing Championships back in 2022. The boat is rounded out by one of the club’s top U21 athletes, Patrick Hanley, in the three-seat. This crew has a wealth of international racing experience, and therefore the favourites to take out this event on the weekend.
Mercantile
Similar to the MUBC boat, the Mercantile crew also features a mix of U23 athletes, including in stroke seat Matisse Kerr, Joshua Felderhoff in six seat, and Myles Laburn in five seat. Myles Laburn in the five seat is completing his first season down under, the South African native boasts international racing experience having earnt bronze for South Africa in the pair at the U19 World Championships back in 2023. In the seven seat of this crew is Jake Polkinghorne, an experienced Mercantile athlete who represented Victoria in the 2023 U21 youth eights and competed as part of Mercantile’s 2024 Wyfold Challenge Cup crew, who made it to the quarter finals. Dom Frederico, a U23 World Rowing Championship silver medallist in the double, will bring speed and skill to this crew from the bow seat. Whilst we haven’t seen this exact combination of athletes race together before, Mercantile have raced in an open eight more consistently this season than MUBC. They competed in a combination featuring six of the eight athletes, who placed fifth at the New South Wales State last weekend, posting a time over seven seconds behind the Sydney Rowing Club, which took out first place. Whilst this boat features fewer athletes at the international racing standard than the MUBC eight, the extra time spent training and racing in the eight will be advantageous for the Mercantile crew.
Prediction
While it is always difficult to predict how these scratch combinations will fare against one another, I would predict that, given the depth of the experience within the Melbourne University boat, the Melbourne University crew will win this event.
