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As always, the oldest women at Henley Women’s Regatta (HWR) was the 254-year-old priestess to Bacchus, the Roman god of wine and frivolity, who resides under the cupola of the 1771 folly that dominates the island near the start of the Henley course.
26 June 2024
By Tim Koch
Tim Koch is at the first of this year’s Henley regattas.
This year’s HWR ran from 21 – 23 June and saw a record 2,300 athletes take part in twenty-six fiercely contested events with 300 of the rowers from overseas. This combined with ideal weather and the world’s most famous rowing course made for a wonderful experience for competitors and spectators alike. In Junior Rowing News, Tom Morgan, with only minor heat induced hyperbole, wrote:
There was a point during the Sunday afternoon of Henley Women’s Regatta where we reached an almost utopian state of bliss. The wind had dropped to nothing more than a whisper and the sun was beaming down upon Oxfordshire, enriching the vivid colours of patchwork English field interspliced by the curvature of the Thames. The racing was fast, frantic, furious and the atmosphere peaking as if taking a deep breath before the relentlessness of the next two weeks.
Henley Women’s Regatta is more than just a preview of Henley Royal – it is a blossoming exhibition of outstanding female competition, set in one of the world’s most iconic rowing locations. Every year, the regatta seems to scale new heights, whether that be in terms of coverage, entry list, racing fervour or off-water celebration.
I hope my pictures go some way to illustrating Tom’s words. They are all of Sunday’s semi-finals.
Aspirational Academic 4-: Durham University v Boston University RC, USA.Aspirational Academic 4-: Durham University v Boston University RC, USA. Durham won by four seconds.Aspirational Academic 4-: A row over by A S R Nereus (NED).Championship Eights, the Imperial Coll/Leander Club/Oxford University stroke. The composite beat Newcastle University by three seconds.Aspirational 1x: City of Oxford v Upper Thames. Armstrong of City of Oxford beat Holland by thirteen seconds.Aspirational 1x: City of Oxford v Upper Thames. Holland of Upper Thames on the start.Aspirational 1x: City of Oxford v Upper Thames. Armstrong of City of Oxford.Championship Eights: Brookes A v Brookes B. A beat B by two seconds.Aspirational 1x: Mortlake v Neptune (IRL). Bailey of Mortlake (pictured) beat Kilgallen by seven seconds.Championship Eights: Imperial Coll/Leander Club/Oxford University v Newcastle University. The composite won by three seconds.One of the splendid Henley Royal Regatta slipper launches that carried the umpires.Championship 4x: Nottingham RC/Trentham BC/Twickenham RC v Molesey.Championship 4x: The Molesey crew.Championship 4x: The Nottingham RC/Trentham BC/Twickenham RC composite. They won by two seconds.Junior 4+: Aberdeen Schools Rowing Association v Henley RC. Aberdeen won by six seconds.Junior 8+: Headington School v Shiplake College. Headington won by two seconds.Championship 4-: Leander v Oxford Brookes. The Leander crew on the start.Championship 4-: Leander v Oxford Brookes. The Brookes crew.Championship 4-: Leander v Oxford Brookes. The Leander crew. They won by two seconds.Aspirational Academic 8+: University of London after losing to Oxford Brookes by four seconds.
Hear The Boat Sing 
Tim, could you or someone else please define for this American what makes a boat “aspirational?”
Andy – Jo Harris, press officer at Henley Women’s Regatta, has this to say about what makes “aspirational”:
There are various exclusions of things you can’t have achieved to race aspirational – see the qualification rules here:
Click to access 2024-HWR-Qualification-Rules-v1.4-3rd-Dec-1.pdf
Göran