On Sunday, crews from the north, along with an unusually large southern contingent, will flock to Chester to race North of England Head; 5k from Eccleston to Chester down the River Dee. The Dee is widely renowned as one of the most beautiful stretches of water in the country, with junior world championship teams having used it for training camps in the past, and more recently, St Edward’s School running their pre-Henley camp there, before going on to win the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup. With so much flooding across the country this winter, crews in desperate need of some invaluable racing experience have headed north to prepare for the upcoming Head of the River Races.
Open Eights
The field is stacked; Royal Chester currently hold both the headship of this event and also the Jackson Trophy from last year’s Head of the River and went on to qualify three boats for Henley Royal Regatta in the summer. St Edwards are the current holders of both the Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup and the Queen Mother Challenge Cup at the Henley Royal Regatta and the National Schools’ Regatta respectively. They also only missed out to Royals by four seconds at last year’s event. Agecroft are typically a very strong contender however, they didn’t perform particularly well last season and they seem to be a bit of an unknown quantity this year, not even fielding an eight at their home race. An important set of results to mention before making a prediction is both the results of Royals’ fixtures against The King’s School, Chester, who are in the J18 category, and also the margin by which St Edwards beat the King’s School at Wycliffe Head. Royals and King’s have been having private matches most weekends over the last month or so and whilst Royals have come out on top every time, some of the margins were very tight. However, St Edwards beat King’s by just under a minute at Wycliffe, leading me to think that St Edwards will take the headship and Open Eights this year.
J18 Eights
An even more exciting category! I’ll start with the home crew. King’s Chester have performed exceptionally well locally so far this season, winning most local events that they’ve entered, but it looked like they had their eyes opened at Wycliffe, where they were just under a minute off St Edwards and Shiplake College. This King’s eight is led by a highly experienced stern four, who made the A final in the J16 coxed four at the National Schools’ Regatta, and are now in their final year. Their seven-seat, Fin Thomson, has gone through the GB trials process this year, adding to the quality of this crew. They have comfortably dispatched Shrewsbury School at every turn, most recently at Runcorn Big Head, and Monmouth School at a fixture last weekend, but it will be interesting to see how they fare against Latymer Upper School’s eight.  Latymer entered matched eights at Quintin Head, perhaps not performing as well as they might like, but this appears to be the only official races they have managed to get to, perhaps explaining why they have made the journey north. They have however had some private fixtures against both Hampton and Dulwich. They looked to be slower than Hampton and a similar speed to Dulwich but I don’t know where this puts them compared to King’s, leaving Latymer quite an unknown quantity. For me, I think it will be a race between King’s Chester and Latymer that could go either way, with St Edwards’ second eight challenging strongly.
Women’s Eights
In the women’s eights, the key players will be Royals, St Edwards and Shrewsbury. Royals’ women’s eight haven’t had much racing this season, but they had a fixture against King’s School’s girls eight, which they won comfortably. King’s have beaten Shrewsbury multiple times this year, indicating that Royals will be quicker than Shrewsbury. The St Edwards girls will likely be quicker than Shrewsbury by a significant margin, having beaten the Kings girls by 45 seconds at Wycliffe. The St Edwards eight were five seconds slower than the Grosvenor Rowing Club women’s eight at WeHoRR, who train on the Dee with Royals and from what I have seen on the water, are slower than the Royals eight. I predict that Royals will take a comfortable win, followed by St Edwards and Shrewsbury.
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