Sports: Rowing - Tabby Spindler

• Year: First
• Subject: Classics
• Sport: Rowing

Details of your sporting career at Merton and Oxford
I started rowing only at the beginning of Michaelmas 2021 in the Merton novices programme, and within seven weeks, our boat had won Christ Church Regatta (the novice-only regatta at the end of Michaelmas). At the beginning of Hilary, I started rowing with the seniors in the first boat, and the learning curve continued to be steep. I caught Covid in Third Week, and storms and high water disrupted the training in Fifth and Sixth Weeks, but Torpids (the inter-collegiate bumps racing that takes place in March) still came around, and I sat in the six-seat of the women’s first boat. The four-day campaign was quite unsuccessful, mostly due to bad luck, but I was frustrated enough that I signed up to register my interest in the Uni Development Squad for the women’s openweight Blues rowing. Halfway through our Easter training camp in Portugal, I got an email from the Blues assistant coach that listed me in the Beginners’ crew for BUCS Regatta, which was to be at the end of First Week Trinity. Despite never having rowed together as an VIII before, we came second in the category (out of 38), and I was especially proud to have been Stroke for the races. So, in Trinity term, I trained with both the Dev Squad and the Merton women’s 1st boat, taking the seven seat in a bow-rigged boat for Summer Eights races and stroking the Dev Squad boat again at Met Regatta at the Dorney Olympic Lake at the end of Sixth Week. In Trinity, I have also been elected Captain of the womens’ squad. Next year, I look forward to taking charge of the women’s squad for the two major bumps campaigns as well as some external regattas, and I hope to trial for open-weight Blues the year after.

What got you started in your sport?
I had never rowed before coming to Merton in October 2021; when I got here in Fresher’s Week, I was happy to give it a go, but I mostly went along because there was a free barbecue at the boathouse and everyone else was going. I liked to think that I was relatively fit even if I hadn’t ever been ‘sporty’, but rowing is such a strange sport that you can’t really tell from the taster session who is going to be ‘good’ at it. Because there is the risk of capsizing, you progress quite slowly, and it's such an unnatural movement that is so dissimilar to any more common sports that it takes a while to even understand what you’re supposed to be doing at any one moment, let alone to be doing it correctly. Nevertheless, after the taster session, I was keen to go to a few more sessions at least. I discovered quite quickly, though, that I loved the early morning starts. I had never been an early bird, but the mornings on the Isis, with their walks with friends down to the boathouse and cold air while sitting on the river, suited me perfectly. I ended up doing about four or five water sessions a week in Michaelmas term, plus a few tank (highly technical) sessions and some ergs (fitness). We placed second in Christ Church Regatta. In the final week, we did a 2km test, the standard test in rowing, and though I had no idea what to aim for, I ended up with 8 minutes 12 seconds, which seemed to impress the people who knew more than I did. I returned two days later, having been told by my coach that I could aim to go sub-8-minutes by February, and pulled 7 minutes 56 seconds. These times are by no means highly competitive, but for someone who had started rowing two months previously, they garnered enough enthusiasm from more experienced members of the boat club that I set out into the Christmas holidays with the impression that I could actually do quite well in rowing.

How do you manage to stay competitive in your chosen sport while maintaining the level of academic work required?
It’s definitely exhausting. You get home after the end of term and you crash, because fitting so much into an eight-week term means you have little time to relax. I think the time schedules of rowing help (at least for me), because the early mornings force you to at least try to get an early night, even if it doesn’t always happen. I also think you have to sign up knowing that your uni life won’t be the same as everyone else’s; you don’t have time for as many last-minute, spontaneous plans, and you don’t go out clubbing or drinking nearly as much. In fact, I barely drank alcohol this Trinity. Because of what you are missing out on, I think there are three things you have to do:

1. You have to really want it, and you have to love the day-to-day of your sport; thinking of the glory of medals won’t get you through long stretches when training is ‘boring’ and it means missing out on social time and sleep;
2. You have to be strict with yourself in terms of organisation of time. When you’re trying to cram a lot into an already-busy schedule, you have to know that time for working is time for working. (I’m not very good at this yet.); and
3. You have to give yourself sleep. Decide how much sleep you need to function and then get it at least 6/7 nights.

I also think that attitude and focus are a big part of it; you can’t drift through classes, essays, or training with an ‘I’ll turn up and it will happen’ attitude. You have to be focussed on whatever you’re doing and be determined that you’re going to do it to the best of your ability on that day.

What’s special about the sporting side of life at Merton?
I think the mutual understanding of who we are and what we do is what makes Merton a special place to be an athlete. While we have a great sports pavilion and erg room, a wonderful boathouse, and generous funding from the college, none of that would mean anything without the support that comes from the rest of the sporting world at Merton; the encouragement and enthusiasm that my rowing friends and teammates give each other is so key to being able to continually dedicate yourself to the sport you love. My friends never mind if I turn up in sweaty sports kit or if I’m not drinking because of an early session the next day. It definitely helps that almost all my best friends row and are involved with the Boat Club committee, because it really does just make it feel like a big family activity. The biggest problem we face is that we’re all living together next year and we’ll all need to shower at the same time, but I would say that’s definitely worth it for the community and support that comes from having such close bonds with your crew.

Who is your sporting hero?
I have to say Imogen Grant; she began rowing at her Cambridge college in 2014 and next year was in the Cambridge VIII that won the European Universities Championships. She is a world champion and a Tokyo Olympian, and she has won the Boat Race three times. Most significantly, she’s 5’6”, which is also my height; given that length of the stroke (and therefore height of the rower) is a big thing in rowing, it’s so motivational to see someone of my height making it so far. While she is a lightweight rower at international standard, her three wins in the Boat Race have come from open-weight boats, and it proves that my aspirations are not impossible to achieve! (Though they may be very unlikely...)

What’s been your greatest moment on the field of play so far?
The second place at nationals felt pretty good. Given that we had never trained together before as an eight before that day, our starts (which are slightly hectic even in the best circumstances) were really not our strong suit, so we began the race at the back, but our rhythm and strength allowed us to push past four of the five other boats in our final. Every time our cox (who is a Merton affiliate, and a lovely friend of mine) started shouting that we were about to push past another boat, there was such a feeling of determination. When you’re 1500 metres into a 2km race, you’re so ready to stop and just give up, but it’s all about pushing through that and just going until the end.

...the worst...?
My worst moment is probably this: At Met Regatta on Dorney Lake, it was very, very windy. To get all the boats into position to start (in a straight line, pointing towards the finish line, and not about to crash into each other as soon as you start), the cox has to manoeuvre the boats backwards onto a ‘stakeboat’, which is basically a pontoon that points out into the lake, with a person lying on their stomach with their torso out over the water. The person grabs the stern of the boat and you wait in that position until all eight boats are ready to go. When it’s super-windy, though, the boat gets pushed sideways and ends up pivoting around the stern, which doesn’t move because it’s being held by the stakeboat-person. To combat this, you do something called ‘scratching’ which is when some rowers pass the handle of their oar forward to the person in front of them in the boat; this person then takes tiny little strokes, and because the angle of the oar to the boat is so different, it moves the boat sideways (against the wind) instead of forward or backwards and the boat stays in the same place despite the wind. You of course have to hand the oars back before you start rowing.

The marshal had told us to scratch, so our bow seat, three seat, and five seat had all passed their blades forward to two, four, and six. Because of the wind, though, the regatta was running behind schedule, and something went wrong with the start system, so the light turned green with no warning; while the other boats had already been told by their marshals that they should hand the blades back, our own marshal hadn’t, so when all the other boats were starting their races, we were still handing blades back. It was a mess, and it was quite disappointing, but it was definitely also a learning experience, and I think incidents like this teach you a bit of resilience on the playing field.

...and the funniest?
My funniest memory is probably when our launch (speed-boat) driver managed to ground it on a sandbank about three minutes into an outing, and we spent the rest of the outing trying to pull it off the sandbank with a bit of rope and rowing as hard as we could. It didn’t work, unsurprisingly.

Finally, what word, phrase or mental picture do you use to get yourself through the tough times in your sport?
I can’t think of a catchy way to put this, but I get a kind of strength and determination from telling myself that I’m the only person that can make myself fail. If I’m in the middle of a 2km test and I stop pulling hard, that’s my own fault. If I’m in a regatta, or a bumps race, and I give up on my technique because I’m tired and we don’t do as well as I wanted, that’s because of me. If I can never be bothered to stretch or cool down and then I’m achy the next day, I can't blame anyone else. Of course, this doesn’t apply to every situation, but so far, in the moments that mattered, it’s been getting me through.