If you are a member of a boat club, you may know already that this year the traditional ‘Summer Eights’ rowing regatta has been moved from 5th week to 7th week with a number of tweaks to the event format, notably running under the ‘Torpids’ rules, to help the organisers to mitigate potential issues caused by both COVID itself and the related lack of training time for crews.
The key change for alumni and supporters of college rowing is that the organisers, Oxford University Rowing Clubs, are having to discourage any spectator attendance to avoid crowds. Access to the boathouse island will be controlled and limited to competitors only and towpath gatherings will be strongly discouraged with a combination of clear signage, security stewards and support from the local authorities.
As such, we would like to ask you not to go to the island if you usually support the crews, but watch online instead this year. While the event will have a different look and feel and it will not be possible to run any alumni events at the river, we are delighted to announce that, after having to cancel last year’s regatta, we will be going ahead from approximately noon to 19:00 on the 4 days from Tuesday 8th to Friday 11th June and the entire event will be livestreamed to allow alumni and supporters of college rowing around the globe to watch.
Supporters will be able to view this at: https://www.oxfordbumpsracing.com/
While this will not be quite the experience you’re used to if you’re a regular viewer, there is an upside — we hope that the bumps regatta this year can have a bigger impact in the alumni community than can ever be possible amongst those who are able to come back to Oxford to watch.
The filming and broadcasting is courtesy of Oxfordshire based event production and livestreaming specialist, First Sight Media, who will be providing an extremely high quality experience for viewers – using multiple fixed cameras and a drone. This should give alumni, supporters and relatives of participants the opportunity to see entire races and to experience far more of the event than has ever been possible from one viewing position at a boathouse. It’s also, of course, globally accessible.