We have reached the summit. As a rowing community, there are few weeks in the calendar that we collectively look forward to more than Henley Royal Regatta. The unique match-racing style format, the frivolity and festival unfolding on the banks alongside a pomp and circumstance that transports the punter back through the pages of time itself. All of this is secondary though to the curvature of competition that angles upwards as the week unfolds. From heats on the Tuesday to finals on the Sunday, all roads lead to the red box. JRN will be with you every step of the way to provide the most comprehensive coverage of the Regatta available anywhere in the world – and we start with our exclusive set of event previews. Roll on the racing.
Total Entries: 72 (To be reduced to 32 by Qualifying Races)
Oxford Brookes University
Over the last decade, no student rowing program on the continent has been able to compete with Oxford Brookes University. They have dominated the British University championships to the extent that the conversation has centered around who will win the silver medal – and they often collect that honour too.
Despite early murmurings to the contrary, it was more of the same from the student group this season. Winners of the University pennant at the Head of the River by more than 17 seconds, students were littered throughout the four burgundy crews that finished in the top ten on the Tideway. In the regatta season, Brookes have been successfully flying the flag for Britain across the continent. They made up the entirety of the A-Final on Saturday at the Holland Beker and were three of the top four on both days of the Ghent International May Regatta.
With two Brookes crews in higher eights events at this Regatta, some of the top student athletes have been pulled into those boats, but the Temple ‘A’ crew remains remarkably strong. We are expecting this crew to be a combination of the line-ups that claimed gold and silver in the championship eights at BUCS Regatta, 12 seconds ahead of the rest of the pack. The other three eights entered in the draw are from the three medal-winning crews in the intermediate category.
However, not all is perfect for the burgundy behemoths. This weekend at Marlow Regatta, the crew looked fallible for the first time this year. A fifth-placed finish in the A-Final is the worst outcome for the premier Temple entry for quite some time. With testing still to follow, the pressure will be on for Henry Bailhache-Webb to find the winning combination if he seeks to become the first institution to win three successive Temple Challenge Cups.
Amsterdamsche Studenten Roeivereeniging Nereus, Netherlands
With no domestic crew able to live up to the challenge, the closest rivals of Oxford Brookes in recent years comes from across the North Sea in the form of Amsterdam-based ASR Nereus.
Like many in the Netherlands, Nereus is not directly affiliated with any particular educational institution – instead it has members from the two universities in the city as well as half a dozen registered colleges. They have built this base into the largest and fastest of the Dutch student rowing clubs as their thousand-strong membership regularly produces some of the best crews on the continent. They have won the Dutch Varsity regatta on 45 of its 137 runnings. In more recent history, they have turned their focus to Henley Royal Regatta and achieved great success. Three wins in the Temple Challenge Cup is second only to Oxford Brookes in historical success with their most recent victory in the event coming in 2021.
This season, the running has not been perfectly smooth. At the Varsity race, they finished in fourth place, their worst finish since the pandemic. However, given this is a race in coxed fours over 3000 metres, the relevance may be limited in predicting next week’s racing. Over the more common distance, they have had more success, picking up gold at the Dutch championships in the elite eight by open water on the Bosbaan in Amsterdam.
However, if they want to take the Temple Challenge Cup back on the ferry with them, they will need to do more than just be the best in their country. So far this season, they have seen a fair bit of Oxford Brookes but have been unable to get the better of them. Fifth on the Saturday of Ghent International May Regatta behind three Brookes crews was followed by a similar outcome on the Sunday of Holland Beker just three weeks later so they will need to roundly improve if they want to go home victorious next week.
Harvard University, U.S.A.
On internet message boards across the pond, there are murmurs that this Harvard University lightweight crew is the best boat the division has produced in recent history. They cut through their opponent list with relative ease, picking up victories wherever they went. There were no close calls along the way either, as their tightest race all season was a 1.9 second victory over an early-peaking Cornell crew. By the end of the season, their five-second win over then-third-ranked Princeton was par for the course.
In the national championship final, it was never in much doubt; the crew was able to slowly edge away from Penn, the early challengers, finishing up with a boat length victory over the field. The depth in their program even allowed their second eight to overcome the predictions to win a second set of gold medals for the crimson.
To complete their season and truly cement themselves as one of the great crews, they now need to perform at Henley. The Temple Challenge Cup has not been the most generous to lightweight crews who make the trip. Cornell was the last national champion crew to make the trip and were sent home on Friday by a stronger offering from the University of London. It has been 15 years since an American lightweight crew lifted the Temple, when the Princeton Tigers topped off a celebrated season.
If they want to replicate that feat, Harvard have gone about it in the right way. Starting their trip early, they lined up for Marlow Regatta on Dorney Lake, ready to shake the travel out of their legs. On arrival, they made a statement, finishing fourth overall, ahead of all other Temple Challenge Cup entries. Transferring to the Henley course, they will have the expertise of three British rowers to help them make the transition to the challenging course as they look to make history.
Princeton University, U.S.A.
While we saw their lightweights make it to Friday in this event twelve months ago, this year sees the return of the full Princeton University heavyweight squad to the Henley course for the first time since 2015. With the first Varsity eight racing in the Ladies Challenge plate, the Temple Challenge Cup will be contested by the second and third eights from this prestigious institution.
In that trip in 2015, the second eight contested the Ladies Plate, falling to Leander on Thursday, which started a period of a couple of hours where all three boats were eliminated from competition following a historically successful season.
This spring, they have reached possibly the highest watermark of Greg Hughes’ tenure. Throughout the dual-racing season, the first and second varsity eights went undefeated in competition, the first time both crews have achieved that feat in the program’s 152-year history. Famous wins over Harvard, Yale and Brown capped off the regular season before eyes turned to the multi-lane championships.
While the first eight was pipped to their first win at Eastern Sprints in 18 years, the two lower boats we will see in the Temple both came away as champions as the Tigers took home the Rowe Cup. Two weeks later in their hometown, the IRAs ended in another disappointment. The first eight missed the medal pontoon altogether as they struggled to recover from a slow start, but the lower boats continued to succeed, both winning silver medals in their respective events.
Consistently strong across both dual and six-lane racing, the second and third eights will be wanting to impress in the most prestigious dual racing in world rowing. They have posted the times this season to be competitive with any of the other names on the entry and will be wanting to take the Temple Challenge Cup back to Princeton as their lightweights did in 2009.
University of London
Across the last few years, the University of London has become consistently the best of the rest within British university rowing. They have succeeded in leveraging their structural advantages with over 200,000 students and one of just two universities in the south of England with GB Performance Development Academy.
For all the great history in the program, they have had rather limited success in this event. They have reached the semi-finals only twice, most recently in 2021, while in 2017 they reached the final and lost by less than a length to Oxford Brookes. Last season, they had a great year with an A-Final appearance at Marlow Regatta but an unfortunate draw led to both the ‘A’ and the ‘B’ crews being sent home by the eventual finalists before the tea break on Tuesday.
This year, the results are looking more promising: 12th overall at the Head of the River placed them second in the university division. They followed that by opening the regatta season with a fourth-placed finish in the championship eights at BUCS Regatta. However, at the Metropolitan Regatta, the focus changed. They would win the championship four on Saturday while the eight was back in 12th. This shifted the focus of Head Coach Antony Smith towards the Prince Albert Challenge Cup, with the top four athletes in the program stepping out of the eight. In their absence, Marlow Regatta was the first external test for the new crew, and they won’t be pleased with the outcome. 18th overall leaves significant room for improvement as they finished behind six different Temple entries. With top crews coming from across the world, they will need to take a step up if they don’t want to be in Mahiki by Wednesday.
University of Bristol
In an environment full of boat clubs with British Rowing Academy status or very generous institutional support, the University of Bristol stands out. This committee-run program has put itself centre stage in the world of university rowing.
While they won this event in 1991 when it was known as the Henley Prize, they have raced on Friday in the Temple only once this century. They re-announced their status at BUCS Regatta 2022, winning all three men’s intermediate sweep events, before stepping up one year later to make the A-Final in the championship eights.
Following the graduation of star athlete Robbie Prosser, who raced in the first varsity eight at the University of California this spring, there was an expectation that they would regress. This was not the case. Skipping BUCS Head, they were within two and a half seconds of the University of London at Hammersmith Head and took some major scalps at the Head of the River. The regatta season did not start brilliantly as they missed the A-Final in championship eights at BUCS Regatta, but it did not stay that way. At the Metropolitan Regatta, they were the top-ranked university crew on both Saturday and Sunday. Last weekend at Marlow Regatta, they continued their good fortune by finishing tenth overall, third among the Temple entries, behind only Oxford Brookes and the Harvard Lightweights.
Despite this impressive resume, the Henley Stewards inexplicably elected to send the crew to the qualifying races. Barring incident, they will be expecting to be in the draw, and I wouldn’t be surprised if they ended up being selected by Sunday. This crew is capable of a deeper run than we’ve seen from a Bristol crew in generations.
Newcastle University
Last season was far from ideal for Newcastle University. They missed the medals in the championship eight at BUCS Head before missing the A-Final in the same event at BUCS Regatta. The Blue Star rounded that off with first-round exits in both the Temple and Prince Albert Challenge Cups. There was a need for change.
In his 19 years at the helm of the Blue Star, Angelo Savarino has seen among the highest highs for his Newcastle program as they regularly won the premier events at BUCS Regatta and loaded the national team with their graduates. But, in the last decade, the rise of Brookes has massively upset the balance of power. The latter’s domination combined with increased competition from their neighbours in the north-east of Britain has meant that the road to success has become harder and harder until it reached its nadir last season.
But they have adapted; a new training program this year has led to a pick-up in results. Winning at Rutherford Head in December ahead of Molesey and all of their neighbours showed they were on a good trajectory before only an aggressive line from the Durham championship eight cox stopped them from winning the complete set of men’s sweep events at BUCS Head.
They would get their revenge on Durham at the Head of the River before opening the regatta season at BUCS Regatta, returning to the A-Final. No single-year turnaround can ever be perfect, and the Blue Star have struggled at some of the regattas on Dorney Lake. Fifth among universities at the Metropolitan Regatta and seventh on that same metric at Marlow leaves plenty to be desired, but if Newcastle can tap into their form from the early head season, there will be a lot of joy flowing down the Tyne and Thames.
Durham University
While Durham University have a great history at Henley Royal Regatta, with six event wins in fours plus a run to the semi-finals in this event two years ago, the Palatinate always seems to shine brightest at BUCS events. The sports administration at the University greatly values sport and places a large emphasis on the overall BUCS Points rankings, placing in the top three every year since 2012.
Despite their consistent success at BUCS, they have been far more inconsistent at some of the more traditional events. In 2022, they finished 23rd at the Head of the River but made it to Saturday in the Temple Challenge Cup. In 2023, they finished 15th at the head as the best crew from outside the Thames basin yet still crashed out on Wednesday evening at Henley Royal Regatta.
This season has been another one of highs and lows for the men in palatinate. Roundly defeated in February at the Rutherford Head, they started off 2024 in earnest by winning championship eights at BUCS Head over the same course. A month later, they travelled down to London and managed to finish outside the top 25 at the Head of the River.
The regatta season has not calmed the swings as they won bronze as the best non-Brookes boat at BUCS Regatta but finished behind two crews who missed the A Final at BUCS when they made the trip to the Metropolitan Regatta. Last weekend at Marlow Regatta, they split the difference ranking as the fifth university crew, losing only to Brookes, Harvard and a resurgent Bristol crew.
Building towards a peak, which they do so well for BUCS events, they may be faster than we have seen from them all year on the Henley stretch, assuming they did not peak too soon in Nottingham.
Edinburgh University
Over the last decade, Edinburgh University have come to dominate the Scottish rowing scene. Guided by Colin Williamson and enthusiastically backed by the university bursars, the baby blue army have established themselves as one of the premier destinations to row as a student in the UK. Beyond this, they have pioneered the art of beginner rowing, reliably boating crews that can match the top athletes from many of the nation’s mid-tier programs.
Despite this, they have never quite been able to make it work in the biggest and most prestigious boat class. They have no medals in the championship eight at any BUCS Regatta, and beyond the COVID-impacted 2021 campaign, they have never made it beyond the second round in the Temple Challenge Cup. Their zenith was winning the Prince Albert Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta in 2016.
This season, their form has been all over the place. At BUCS Head, they were a distant third in the championship eights at BUCS Head, behind even the second eight from Newcastle, but following a trip up to Inverness for seat racing, they emerged with a 13th placed-finish at the Head of the River. In doing so, they became the third best university crew on the day and the best boat from outside of the Thames.
During the regatta season, there was a similar occasion. A good but not great BUCS Regatta, where the blue riband boat placed fifth, was followed by a relative underperformance at the Metropolitan Regatta. Since then, the focus of new men’s coach Dale Flockhart has been on the Prince Albert Challenge Cup, moving the top four athletes over to attempt to win the event for the second time in the program’s history.
Despite this, the Temple eight has emerged from their training camp in the Highlands faster than when the top four were onboard. Tenth place in the Marlow time trial was a real statement of intent from the crew, and while they slipped to 15th overall after the side-by-side, they remain a potent threat. Arriving into the most important regatta of the season, this crew, greater than the sum of its parts, will back themselves against almost any competition.
Delftsche Studenten Roeivereeniging Laga, Netherlands
Delft, a small city between Rotterdam and the Hauge, plays home to TU Delft, the highest-ranked university in the country. For its students, DSRV Laga is one of the oldest and most prestigious of the Dutch rowing societies. Winners of the first Varsity race and 29 more since then, they are on a winning drought of more than 25 years in the ‘old four’. On foreign soil though, their successes have been more recent, winning the Temple Challenge Cup in 2013 and making deep runs to the Friday in two of their three entries since.
This season, they have posted some impressive results, finishing fourth overall as the second fastest university crew at the Heineken Roeivierkamp in March. In the regatta season, they took some time to find their feet. Fourth place in the old four at the Varsity Regatta will have been disappointing after they beat the eventual champions in the heat, a result they followed up by placing fourth at the national championships.
However, in recent weeks, they have turned a corner on their pace. In favourable conditions on the Bosbaan, against a strong field of Dutch competitors, they would reign victorious, not only sealing the victory by two thirds of a length over Nereus but also becoming the first Dutch university crew to break 5:30 over a 2000-metre course.
This crew is a talented group containing under-23 internationals, national champions in the pair as well as members of the Dutch composite crew who made the trip to the Head of the Charles in October. They will be travelling with the belief that they are best suited to fly the flag for the Netherlands on the Henley stretch next week.
Groninger Studenten Roeivereniging ‘Aegir’, Netherlands
Also making the trip from the Netherlands is GSR Aegir, the third-oldest student rowing club in the country. Based in the province of Groningen, away from the urban centre of the country, they will be making their first entry into the Temple Challenge Cup in more than two decades. Dipping their toes in last year, the club’s men entered the Prince Albert Challenge Cup after being away from Henley for 18 years. Defeating the four from Colgate University, U.S.A. in the first round, they were comfortably sent home by Imperial College London on Thursday.
Coming back in a larger boat this year, they will be aiming to match or better that performance, but their domestic results make it unclear how easy this will be. So far this season, they have emerged as competitive within the Dutch student rowing scene but are a step below the top tier of crews.
At the Heineken Roeivierkamp, they finished seventh in the secondary event for men’s eights and in the premier ‘old four’ event at the Varsity Regatta, they would miss the A-Final, finishing 2.5 seconds too late to claim the spot for the fastest third place in the heats.
This pattern continued through the bulk of the regatta season in their eights, as while they made it to the A-Final on Sunday at the Holland Beker, this was largely by virtue of being in the weakest heat. When there, they were roundly beaten, finishing several lengths off the back whilst in the final of the recent Bosbaanwedstrijden, they were 20 seconds slower than the second eight from Nereus, scraping under six minutes in record-setting conditions. They will have to make a step on if they want to enjoy a notable run through the draw next week.
Koninklijke Studenten Roeivereeniging Njord, Netherlands
The last of the four Dutch Student rowing societies to be mentioned, KSRV Njord is the oldest in the country, and primarily draws from the oldest university in the country too. Despite its age and experience, the Leiden-based club has limited experience on the Henley course, having race the Temple Challenge Cup only twice this century. They are not complete strangers though, having made a brief appearance in the Prince of Wales Challenge Cup twelve months ago.
With previous trips to Henley having classically short legs, there is an expectation that in the club’s 150th year they will be able to compete with the top crews they will meet on this side of the North Sea, and their racing resume suggests they may be able to win a round or two this year.
Back in March, the crew finished third at the Heineken Roeivierkamp in the ‘gevorderde’ eight, the second highest classification offered. Back in the traditional format, Njord seemed unable to compete with the armada of Brookes entries in the Holland Beker, missing the final on both days. Against domestic competition, they began to find their feet, with a fifth-placed finish at the Dutch championships which they repeated at the Bosbaanwedstrijden.
Racing in their new eight, named by and in honour of Princess Beatrix, the patron of the club, they will be hoping to proudly fly their flag next week on the Henley stretch. They are likely to be a crew more reliant on a favourable draw to impress, but as they are celebrating such an important anniversary, any rounds won will be greatly celebrated.
La Salle University, U.S.A.
Hailing from Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, the La Salle explorers have dramatically turned their program around over the last three years. A private Catholic university with just 5,000 students, surrounded by bigger, more established teams on boat house row, they have risen to become one of the most talked-about crews in the country.
Since the appointment of Ivo Krakic, a Serbian born alumnus of local rivals Drexel, the program has moved from targeting the fours event to switching their focus to the blue riband eights events.
Despite this late turn in focus, they have rapidly risen up the charts, finishing 18th overall in the Varsity eights in just their first season, finishing strongly at the national championships. This season, the first eight picked up a number of marquee wins across the regular season including twice collecting the shirts of Drexel. They would finish17th in the first eight at IRAs, their second program-best finish in as many years under Krakic.
Despite their historic levels of success, the Explorers will have to wait one more year to pick up the Richard O’Brien-James Hanna Trophy for varsity eights at the Dad Vail Regatta. Having been a mainstay in the earlier days of the regatta, picking up the top honours on six occasions in just eight years, they have not replicated that success since 1958. This season, despite expectation in earlier weeks, they finished a length back on Cooper Lake, leaving them waiting to break their drought.
This will be their first trip to Henley Royal Regatta, and they will want to put on a good showing in front of a global audience. A weekend performance is not beyond them if the draw is favourable, but the unfamiliar water could see them flying home early if they’re not careful.
Orange Coast College, U.S.A.
Orange Coast College is not a name many people on this side of the Atlantic know well. It is the only two-year college in all of the United States that has a rowing program, but it regularly punches above its weight. Known for producing coaches as much as it is athletes, it acts as a production line for a number of west coast rowers who, for whatever reason, are not recruited out of high school, allowing them high-level racing opportunities before transferring elsewhere to complete their degrees.
In the past, they have really excelled; a bronze medal in their first trip to the IRA championships plus a win in the freshmen eights in 1980 meant the program was worth real discussion under the long-term tutelage of David Grant.
They are no strangers to the Henley course either, as this is the 13th visit in the program’s history, but their only trip in the last two decades came in 2018. That year, the boat made it through qualifiers and one round, before falling to eventual champions from the University of Washington on Thursday.
In the modern era, they compete in the American Collegiate Rowing Association, a league filled by club rowing programs at four-year universities. This season, the pirates have assembled their best sets of results under head coach Cameron Brown, picking up medals in all four eights events at the WIRA championships before placing a program-best fourth place in the varsity eight in the ACRA championships in Oak Ridge.
Prequalified to the main draw, this Orange Coast College crew is a combination of their first, second and freshman eights and will be hoping to see how deep into the Regatta they can go. With this non-perfect crew, they will be at the whim of the gods, if they get a favourable draw, to make it through a round or two next week.
Cornell University, U.S.A.
After their heavyweights made the trip twelve months ago, reaching the Friday in this event, the lightweight squad from Cornell University have hopped across the pond to take on the best that Britain has to offer. In their second season under the leadership of Rio Olympian Tyler Nase, this program remains competitive in the tight field of IRA lightweight rowing.
Despite early promise, this season has been underwhelming for the big red. They entered the campaign with the number-two ranking in the sport and, at their first dual, they would finish within two seconds of the Harvard Varsity eight, the closest they would be pushed all season. They followed this up with an even closer loss to the Princeton Tigers before beating Columbia and Dartmouth away from their home water. Heading into the championship post-season, expectations were high but fifth at the Eastern Sprints and fourth at the IRA championship left much to be desired for the first eight and, while the lower boats did better, including a win at Sprints for the third eight, it may been a question of what could have been this season.
In the hopes of putting a big red bow on the season, the lightweights make their first trip across the Atlantic since 2017. In that year, Cornell brought three eights, including their undefeated national champions, to Henley, with their best-performing eight falling on Friday’s racing to the eventual losing finalists. This year, the crew is from a mixture of their boats. They have four rowers and a cox from their first eight, joined by three members of their second boat and one from their third boat. Together, this crew will aim to match that achievement, though they will have to make it through qualifiers and hope for a fortunate draw in order to do that.
Nottingham University
Likely the slowest crew to be pre-qualified by the stewards, Nottingham University will be grateful for the nod. Once at the top of British university rowing, they became regulars in winning the Victor Ludorum at many of the first university championships organised by what was then known as BUSA from 1994 until 2003. In that time, the team even managed a run to the semi-finals in the 2000 Temple Challenge Cup. But since their heyday, success has been more limited. They have won just five rounds in the student men’s events in the last 20 years and haven’t picked up a championship eights medal at BUSA or BUCS since 2001.
This season has not been one of incredible results either for Nottingham. The early head season did not inspire too much confidence as they finished 11th at Rutherford Head and tenth overall at BUCS Head, but the Head of the River was a step forward for the program, with their 39th-placed finish representing their best result since COVID.
In the spring, the challenges continued as they would enter championship eights on their home water at BUCS Regatta, placing last in their repechage. At the Dorney Regattas, neither 22nd in the smaller Sunday field at Metropolitan Regatta nor 38th at Marlow Regatta would particularly point to a crew likely to prequalify in this event. However, they were granted the entry so have an opportunity to prove the haters wrong with a strong performance this week. I would be rather surprised if they managed more than a first-round win.
Prediction
With Oxford Brookes showing weakness at Marlow Regatta, it is all up for grabs this week with a few crews who will back themselves to snatch that title. DSRV Laga demonstrated killer speed on the Bosbaan but my eyes are looking west for the winners. Either the Princeton second eight or the Harvard lightweight first eight would be my international favourites for the event, with the crimson possibly a slight edge.
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