VICTORIA, B.C. – With some outstanding performances at the 39th annual Elk Lake Spring Regatta this past weekend, the 2013 spring race season started with a bang for the UBC Thunderbirds rowers.
 
Saturday's racing began with heats in the open women's pair. With near perfect racing conditions, UBC won every heat of the event, a first for the program, and proceeded to qualify three boats to the A, and two boats to the B final.  The men's pair heats followed, where two boats qualified for the A final and one for the B.
 
As the wind picked up throughout the day finals began with the Novice women's 8+. Together the crew raced through the bouncy conditions to place second behind Victoria in a time of 7:18.9. The men and women's junior varsity 8+ event finals followed, and in two exciting races UBC pushed past Victoria to take the win in each event. The women lead their race across the line winning by 13.1 seconds, and the men's crews took it wire to wire - UBC only winning by 4.3 seconds.  Also in the junior varsity men's 8+ event were the UBC men's novice 8+, who, despite having equipment difficulties completed the race in 6:51.3.
 
In the men and women's lightweight singles events, UBC took third and second respectively. Rares Crisan placed third behind two Seattle Rowing Club scullers with a time of 7:45.7 and Andrea Bundon was only a bow ball behind first place with a time of 7:56.8.
 
In UBC's last two finals of the day, the men and women's open pair, the Thunderbirds saw several solid performances. The UBC women placed first, fourth, fifth and seventh, and the UBC men placed second, third and seventh just behind the Canadian national team training centre boat.
 
Sunday's racing began with straight finals for the Thunderbirds and up first was the women's varsity 8+ event. With only one other Victoria boat in the category, the race was set up from the start to foreshadow Easter weekend's Brown Cup 2013 match-up. The Thunderbirds did not disappoint. Bow seat and third-year varsity rower Martha Smith noted that while we know Victoria to have a very fast starting sequence this year, the Thunderbirds matched them stroke for stroke out of the starting blocks and began to build a lead on the Vikes as both boats shifted to race rate. In the end the Thunderbirds crossed the line in 6:39.9 with 6.2 seconds of open water over the Victoria varsity women's 8+.
 
The women continued their winning streak in the lightweight women's double event with the never-rowed-together-before crew of Bundon and first-year rower Alexis Thind. Together, the two had a rough warm up but everything clicked as they raced out of the starting blocks and across the line four seconds ahead of the second place Seattle Rowing Club crew.
 
Like on Saturday the wind began to pick up throughout the day and the women's varsity eight, split up into two coxed fours, raced down the two-kilometre course to place xecond and fifth, ending their weekend on a strong note.
 
Following the women's varsity 4+ race was the varsity men's 8+. Often the token event of the weekend, the Thunderbirds had three boats, the varsity, junior varsity, and novice crew, entered in this race.

In an exciting race that saw the top four boats come into the last 500m only seconds apart it became clear that once again the Thunderbirds had their bow ball out ahead of the rest of the competition. With a strong headwind the UBC varsity men's 8+ was able to muscle through the conditions to slowly create a lead on Victoria's varsity 8+ through out the body of the race. With only 300 meters left to go the goal was to just hang on to the lead and in the end UBC was successful crossing the finish line 2.3 seconds ahead of Victoria. The junior varsity men had a good race but unfortunately crossed the line in fourth only one second behind the Victoria boat they'd beaten on Saturday. The novice men's crew, racing solely for experience crossed the line in sixth finishing ahead of a composite novice crew.
 
The weekends racing finished on a high note with the lightweight men's double of Evan Cheng and Maxwell Lattimer finishing first in their event and the novice men's coxed fours finishing fourth, fifth and sixth in the junior varsity category.
 
Men's head coach Mike Peace is optimistic about the men's results from this weekend.

"I was really happy with the JVs win on Saturday, they put together a well coordinated race but slipped a bit Sunday in the Open 8+ allowing the JV Vikes through in the last 20 strokes," said Pearce.

"I was also very pleased with the varsity men's 8+ win given the new line up from the fall that now includes Alex Janzen and Maxwell Lattimer. Last year, we won this race by a larger margin and Victoria came back pressing us right to the line three weeks later - it was a great test and Brown Cup will undoubtedly be another tight race for the varsity men. The JVs have never won the Brown Cup Reserves Race and they will need to get it all right three weeks from now."
 
The Brown Cup will take place March 30 at the John M.S. Lecky UBC Boathouse in Richmond.