A key landmark of the winter season, Fours Head is one of the most well-attended and popular events of the year, indicated by the vast number of entries that were way beyond the capacity of the event. This being a championship event means that all crews who entered have been accepted to race, giving a high-quality field that is littered with international talent, Boat Race hopefuls and club crews looking to test their speed in the top ranked event.
Oxford Brookes University BC
Brookes have two boats in this event, with the top one consisting of five of their Caversham-based athletes (David Bewick-Copley, Tom Digby, Rory Gibbs and Morgan Bolding). All come from the GB Men’s Eight (the bow three and the six seat, steered by the ever present Harry Brightmore) who took gold at the World Championships in 2022, and will relish the opportunity to pull on the maroon for a blast down the Tideway.
The second Brookes entry comes from their club-based athletes. With two of last year’s Prince Albert winning crew in Blaise Ivers-Dreux and Marco Tognazzi, this is also a crew with a huge amount of strength and know how in a coxed four. They are joined joined by three Temple winners in Jake Wincomb, Ben Hinves and cox Will Denegri, forming a formidable outfit of experienced oarsmen.
Leander Club
Another crew consisting of GB internationals based out of Caversham, this Leander crew will most likely go toe to toe with Brookes for the win. As well as the international experience, Tom George and Ollie Wynne-Griffith spent last year at Cambridge and Charlie Elwes at Oxford, providing valuable Tideway experience to this crew, along with Henry Fieldman who cut his teeth coxing at Imperial on the Tideway. The foursome is made up with Sholto Carnegie who will presumably stroke the crew, a veteran of racing across the world. With this invaluable experience as well as the international pedigree, this Leander crew will be a serious threat.
Oxford University BC & Cambridge University BC
Fours Head is one of the very few occasions where Oxford and Cambridge will race one another before the Boat Race and offers a valuable marker as to where the respective squads are. For both clubs, it would seem their top crews are in the coxed four event.
For Oxford, their crew contains their President Tassilio Von Mueller, as well as the experienced Jean Phillipe Dufour and James Forward. This should be a boat of athletes looking to put themselves firmly in the forefront of Sean Bowden’s thinking as selection starts to loom for these athletes.
Cambridge’s top offering contains two returners from last year’s beaten Blue Boat in the form of Ollie Parish and Luca Ferraro. These guys placed fifth at trials last weekend and were the fastest U23 crew on the day, so provide a solid base for this crew to build on.
For both clubs, coaches will be looking towards trial eights, one of the major landmarks in the lead up to the Boat Race. Therefore, whilst the other entries from these two clubs in the event may not have the speed of the top crews, all will be wanting to catch the eye of their respective coaches with a strong performance, as combinations start to be put together for this crucial test.
University of London BC
Another Tideway based entry; UL are starting to emerge as one of the most consistent challengers to Brookes at the very top end of the student rowing scene. After a strong season last year, making the Friday of Henley with their top boat, and various international vests at U23 level, the men in purple have an entry that contains two of their trialists from last weekend, where Josh Burke and Tom Cross produced an eighth place finish. UL will want a strong performance on home water here.
Prediction
These are the crews who I would expect to be fighting towards the top of this event. London RC, Vesta and Kingston have all also got crews in this event. However, being club entries, I feel they may lack the firepower to compete with the student crews discussed here but it will be interesting to see how they compare to one another, and their times in comparison to the club event.
In terms of looking at the win, this will be a straight fight between the top crews of internationals from Brookes and Leander. This could go either way, but my gut tells me that Brookes may well edge it.
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