Rowing Trophy: Found And Lost...

The other day I read a nice article from the Liverpool Daily Post about a 22-year old student, Simon Parkinson, who had found a Victorian silver trophy at Battersea market. Parkinson realised that it was an old rowing trophy and, as he is a collector of silverware and his parents and sisters are members of the Runcorn RC, he bought it for £8. After a good cleaning, he could read the engraved text: “Mersey Rowing Club, Captain’s Pairs, Sept 5, 1891, W T Wood, J Snape, Stroke”.

When members of Runcorn RC went to a fundraiser event at Mersey RC, they brought the Victorian trophy along, and to make a long story short, the race has now been revitalised. To read the full article, please click here.

After reading this nice story I came to think about a very beautiful trophy that my Swedish rowing club, Malmö Roddklubb, used to be the owner of, the Nordic Rowing Federation’s Championship Trophy for Eights, which was instituted in 1911 (seen on the right). After several victories when crews from my club, trained by Jack Farrell of London RC, became Nordic champions, my rowing club became the owner of this gorgeous pot in the 1910s.

Then, during the 1980 and 1990s the club house was struck by burglaries. The club’s collection of medals and trophies were locked up, but as the club’s committee was afraid that we would maybe lose these prizes, the committee decided to let the little sport museum in Malmö have them on a loan. A short time afterwards, the Nordic Rowing Federation’s Championship pot was stolen from the museum! Thereafter, it was sold at an auction in Stockholm, and sadly, vanished into thin air.

Perhaps, some decades from now, it will show up in a bric-a-brac sale…