Women's Eight Head of the River Race

The organising committee worked hard in the week before the race, to enable a race to go ahead at all this year. While the PLA Ebb Flag turned to yellow mid-week, the stream remained stubbornly strong. We looked at different scenarios and had to make a difficult decision on safety grounds, to cut the field by around half. We completely understand that this left many crews disappointed at not being given the opportunity to race. We were still watching the weather right up to race day itself with a concern about wind strength and direction potentially causing more problems. With this frame of reference, we were pleased with the outcome last Saturday.

The Women’s Head exists as a not-for-profit event, where all proceeds are reinvested in the continuing development of the event for future years. Many of the costs of running the race are incurred upfront, and are set regardless of the number of crews that race on the day.

Due to the circumstances that resulted in a smaller field this year, the committee has taken the decision to pay refunds from the event’s reserves. These will be as follows:

1. Any crew that withdrew prior to the 9pm deadline on Wednesday 6th March, either voluntarily or due to being excluded on safety grounds, will receive a full refund (£136).
2. Crews that were cut from the final start order on Thursday 7th March will receive a refund of 90% of the entry fee (£122.40).

Refunds will be processed through BROE in due course.

We would like emphasise that this generous offer is not sustainable in the long term if future races have to be cancelled, and we strongly suggest that competitors should hedge their risk by booking cancellable options for accommodation, travel, etc. where possible, due to the weather-dependant nature of the sport.

Although the stream and river levels have fallen enough for the PLA Ebb Flag status to change to yellow over the last few days, they remain well above the threshold where the PLA would change the flag status to green. This means that we need to increase the gaps between crews to allow for safe marshalling and navigation within the allotted river closure time for the event, which we are unable to extend. The unfortunate consequence of this is a reduction in the number of crews that we can safely include in the draw. In these conditions, we believe that the appropriate number of crews is around half of the original field. To reach this number we have considered the CRIs of crews as the primary metric related to race experience. This has been a tough decision for the committee to make, and we sympathise with all those who will be disappointed not to race on Saturday. We have decided to make this call now rather than later in an effort to give as many crews as possible the opportunity to race, while providing enough notice to those who will sadly miss out.

A revised draw is available here.

Please note that this may affect the awarding of some Pennants as our rules require that there are 3 competitors racing for the Pennant to be awarded.

If your crew has been withdrawn from the race at this point, please do not contact us about refunds. As a committee we are still hard at work organising the race on Saturday, and we will deal with any refund details after the weekend.

As always, the WEHoRR Committee are working hard to deliver a fair and safe race for all our competitors. We have been monitoring both weather models and the strong flow of the river as part of this process. As of Monday evening, the river has a PLA Ebb Flag status of red.

If the PLA Ebb Flag status remains red, we will be unable to run the race for safety reasons. We are currently working towards a scenario where the PLA Ebb Flag status will be yellow on race day as we feel that this currently looks like the most likely scenario.

When the PLA Ebb Flag status is yellow, “The PLA advises beginners, juniors (J15s) and weaker crews not to go afloat on an ebb tide, all river users should navigate with extreme caution and consider whether it is safe for them to go afloat on an ebb tide.” As such, we therefore have to withdraw all J15 and beginner crews at this point (if crews have J15s onboard and can make a suitable substitute by 9pm on Wednesday this will be considered).

We are also asking all clubs/crews to revisit their own risk assessment in light of the forecast conditions. If crews choose to withdraw and we do run the race, those crews will be given a full refund. If the race is cancelled, all crews will be treated equally for refunds based on the final costs incurred by the competition. The deadline for this assessment and guaranteed race refund is 9pm on Wednesday 6th March. Please use BROE for all withdrawals.

The Committee will review the situation on Thursday evening based on the information available at that time, and a final decision will be announced by 9pm on Thursday 7th March.

With just over a week to go until race day, the committee are, as usual, monitoring both fluvial flows and weather forecasts. We are aware that there has been a large amount of rainfall so far this winter.

As in previous years, we will be keeping everyone informed by providing updates as we get closer to race day. Please keep watching our website and social media channels. Our next update will be in the first half of next week.

The Draw for the 2024 race is available here: Draw.

The Provisional Draw for the 2024 race is available here: Provisional Draw.

BROE has now been Closed for Entries and no changes can be made to crews until the Draw
is published, at which point BROE will reopen for substitutions. When the Draw is
published, this will be announced on the website, Twitter and Facebook, and further
information will be emailed to clubs.

In the meantime, you must ensure that you have a Host Club (Boating Location) organised
and, if you have not already done so, please enter this in BROE as soon as BROE reopens.
A warning about parking and trailering at Putney – please note that this is always
oversubscribed. Priority is given to trailers with more than one WEHoRR boat on, and the
fuller the trailer the more likely you are to get a parking place

When the Draw is published, this will be announced on Twitter and Facebook, and further
information will be emailed to clubs.

Every competitor has a duty of care to themselves and all other competitors. Safety is a
shared responsibility. Following new Rowsafe Guidelines in 2023, we expect that Officers of
participating clubs will inform the organisers if any of their rowers has existing medical
conditions that could impact their safety or that of others.  Please use the following email to
provide information safety@wehorr.org All details will be kept in strictest
confidence within the safety team & only shared with other relevant parties in the event of an
emergency.

Best wishes,
Lesley Baguley, WEH Entry Secretary
entrysec@wehorr.org

We have reached 320 paid entries on BROE and are therefore suspending further entries for the 2024 Women’s Eights Head of the River Race. From our records, we think this is the earliest this has happened with over a week to go until the entry deadline. Currently, not all of those paid entries have been accepted as we are waiting for further information from some crews regarding their level of experience and we urge them to provide this to our Entry Secretary as soon as possible. There are also 17 crews who are still unpaid and we will allocate space for those in a first paid first served order if any of the 320 crews are removed from the final number before the entry deadline on 15th February. Further updates to follow.

Entries are now open for the 2024 race on BROE2. We have also updated the content of the Entry page to hopefully make it a bit easier to understand which pennants to enter. Please read this page before going to BROE2 and in particular, take notice of the information regarding experience. We want everyone to have a fun, safe race.

The lists for the clubs eligible for the Small and Medium Club Pennants for 2024 are now available:
Note – Updated 5/1/24

Usually, these would have been published earlier and any queries would have needed to be submitted by the end of December. Due to the delay in publishing the lists this year, we will be accepting queries up until the 31st January 2024.

Updates to pennant criteria will follow in the next couple of days, and entries will be opening shortly. Continue to watch this space!