River Teign Rowing Club attended the first of the 2009 tribute events on Saturday and, due to a clash of dates with the club's local seine boat series, it was only the ladies' A crew who attended.There was a strong contingent of more than 30 gigs attending the Falmouth event and, although the world championships had taken place a month ago, there was still uncertainty about who was favourite and who would be the top crews for the day.The first race of the day was the men's A race, which started smoothly and ended up in a close finish. Caradon took the honours, beating current world champions Par Bay, who finished second in front of Mounts Bay. Only eight seconds separated the first three crews.Caradon continued their success by winning the men's B race with ease, in front of Mounts Bay and Falmouth.It was the under 16s next, and Penryn showed some impressive rowing to cross the line first, just two seconds in front of Mounts Bay. Fowey were third.It was then the turn of the ladies and Teign's crew of Kate Barczok, Ali White, Sarah Free, Lucy Barczok, Kelly Inness and Kerrie Potter, coxed by Any Forte, took to the water just before the U16s had finished their race, for a quick warm up and couple of practice starts.With 33 women's crews taking part, the race was split into three heats and Teign were in the first heat with all the top crews. The race was a real test for the Teign girls due to a couple of crew changes in the few weeks since the Isles of Scilly trip.Teign were between the crews of Rock and Newquay. Rock had a flyer of a start and were a boat length up on Teign within seconds.Teign pulled hard up the first leg and overtook Rock, Newquay and Charlestown to draw level with Mounts Bay at the first mark. They had water on Mounts Bay and pulled round the mark. Teign and Mounts were still neck and neck with only 400 yards to go and right on the stern of Roseland – all three gigs fighting for third place. In the last 100 yards Roseland managed to pull up a few feet and gain third place behind Falmouth in first and Caradon in second, while Mounts Bay just managed to pull ahead of Teign to gain fourth with Teign next in a respectable time of 12 minutes.It was then the ladies' B race, for which Cattewater borrowed Teign's gig Morgan for their C crew who had a respectable row and did the boat proud.The next tribute event is at Mevagissey on June 20.l More rowing on page 61