many of you would have heard or watched the annual boat race between oxford and cambridge. or maybe you have witnessed steve redgrave gaining his 5th gold in 5 olympics (along with matt pincent and his 3rd). whether you have or not, the rowing racing i'm about to describe is probably something new to you.
in the collegiate competition between the 30 odd colleges at oxford, the standard is nowhere near as high as that of the rowers in the boat race on tv, who are of international standards. however this is not the difference i want to talk about.
the river that flows through oxford is actually the thames, the very one that flows through london and worldly famous. in oxford, the stretch is called the isis (named after a greek god). since it is rather upstream stages of the river, the stream is rather narrow and windy (as in wiggly) in oxford. this prevents the possibility of side by side racing over a significant length of water. in addition, since there are many colleges taking part, it would be impractical to race only 2 at a time.
so someone came up with a "brilliant" idea: why don't we race them one after another. this resulted in the bumps racing. here is how it works. races happen over 4 days, and are done in divisions. each division races only once per day.
thirteen boats (in a division) line up in sequence at the start of the race, with one and half boat length in between each pair. when the starting gun is fired, the boats start racing. the aim of the race is to catch the boat in front and not get caught by the boat behind. once boat a catches boat b, they are out of the race, and they switch positions the next day. (we will leave out the over bumping)
how do you catch the boat in front? (the so called bumping) there are a few ways:
1) physically bump them, any part of your boat touches any part of the boat in front, can be very messy and expensive
2) the boat in front sees you coming up fast, and their cox concedes the race
3) completely overtake them
4) cross the finishing line before them
the race course is between 1500-2000 meters, depending on where you start in the division. the race is over when the crew crosses the finishing line without bumping or getting bumped.
before the four days racing, the positions of all the boats are inherited from the previous year, and so on. this generally means that the crews next to each others can be extremely close. to give you an idea of how close, the boat is about 10 meters long. so a crew only has to make up 15 meters on the crew in front over 1500 meters!!!! this is a 1 per cent difference. however if you look at the photo (which is about 1400 meters into the course), then you'll realise the difference between crews can actually be that small. this is what makes bumps racing so exciting.
if you want to know more details, go to the oxford rowing page. OURC
finally, it is in the tradition that if a crew makes a bump up each day then they are awarded the oars they used. the oars are painted with the details of the crew and their achievements. nowadays normally it's a set of old and obsolete oars, but getting "blades" is still quite an honour.
