NAILSWORTH'S Peter Reed suffered a rare defeat with Cheltenham world champion crewmates Steve Williams and Alex Partridge at the National Fours Head in London.

The trio are unbeaten in 25 international races in their full GB world champion four, but with Leander clubmate Marcus Bateman in for strokeman Andy Hodge, they lost out by five seconds at the 4-mile Thames time-trial.

Even worse for Nailsworth Oxford Blue Reed was losing the coxed four Head title to rivals Cambridge.

The Light Blues had German eights world champions Sebastian Schulte and Thorsten Englemann on board with GB Sydney Olympic eights gold medallist Keiran West and World Cup pairs medallist Tom James.

Racing in the slowest of the three class four-man boats, Cambridge covered the reverse Boat Race course in 18 minutes, 22 seconds to finish 11th overall in the 550-boat time-trial, cutting the gap by two lengths on the world champion trio's boat starting two places in front. Reed and his team were 13th overall.