20 July 2016
HTBS editor Göran R Buckhorn writes:
Despite that many of the world’s best rowers skipped this year’s Henley Royal Regatta – they are in training for the Olympic Games in Rio later in August – in many ways the past Henley Royal was a most memorable regatta.
The loyal readers of this website remember that in the Diamond Challenge Sculls, the Belgian sculler Hannes Obreno surprisingly beat Mahé Drysdale, who is the reigning Olympic Champion and a five-time winner of the Pineapple Cup. If Drysdale had won the Diamonds, he would have equaled the Australian Stuart MacKenzie’s six victories between 1957 and 1962. MacKenzie is still the record holder of the Diamonds, while Drysdale is in the group of famous five-time winners like Alexander Casamajor, Jefferson Lowndes and Guy Nickalls.
Sculler Lisa Scheenaard, of the Netherlands, took her first victory in the Princess Royal Challenge Cup, while nine American women from the Princeton Training Center, who are not going to Rio, easily beat Leander Club and Tees Rowing Club to take the Remenham Challenge Cup.
The Dutch crew from Amsterdamsche Studenten Roeivereeniging Nereus crossed the finish line ahead of Leander in the Ladies Challenge Plate, but tough umpire Boris Rankov raised a red flag and after the Henley Stewards had discussed the race, the Nereus oarsmen were ‘disqualified for unsportsmanlike conduct’. This race will be debated for a long time.
For most of the race, University of California, Berkeley, USA, looked like the winners in the Visitors’ Challenge Cup, but with just a few strokes left to cross the finish, the tired Cal crew came too close to the booms and crashed, whereupon their opponents, a good crew from Thames Rowing Club, passed them and crossed the line first. In the Prince Albert Challenge Cup, Edinburgh University took their university’s first Henley win by beating Newcastle University.
All this and everything else that happened at the 2016 Henley Royal Regatta, HTBS covered in 14 articles by Tim Koch (who took some astonishing photographs) and one by Courtney Landers, who visited the regatta for the first time.
Did you miss an article or you would like to read them again? You will find them all gathered here.
Hear The Boat Sing 
Nice round-up, but wasn’t Mackenzie Australian?
Indeed he was! I managed to slip on the keyboard there for a moment. I apologies to all Australians and Kiwis, especially rowing historian Tom Weil, whose mother was from New Zealand. Tom has reported that he almost lost his breakfast reading my Faux Pas this morning.