Student crews seize the day at condensed BUCS Head

288 crews raced the 5k course on the Tyne on Saturday, 22 February 2025 after adverse weather forced cancellation of the second day of racing

When the second day of racing planned for BUCS Head 2025 became the latest casualty of this winter’s weather-driven cancellations, the organisers acted quickly to offer the Beginner Eights – scheduled for the Sunday – the chance to race over the full course on the Saturday.

This enabled a total of 288 crews to race in the end across Open and Women’s eights, quads, coxed fours and coxless fours. The original entry had included 412 crews from 33 Universities including six from Scotland and Queen’s University Belfast from Northern Ireland, the highest overall numbers since the Covid pandemic.

In the Championship events, sculling specialists Reading University took both Quads by comfortable margins. The spoils in the sweep events were dominated by Durham and Newcastle, who shared the openweight categories equally; Durham won the Open Eights, Women’s Coxed Fours and Open Coxless Fours, while Newcastle were victorious in the Women’s Eights, Open Coxed Fours and Women’s Coxless Fours. The winning margins in the eights were just a handful of seconds, but larger in all of the fours events. The two Championship Lightweight Coxless Fours titles went to Imperial (Open) and Newcastle (Women).

Durham University: winners of Open Championship Eights (Photo: AllMarkOne)

Edinburgh University won the Open Intermediate Eights by 0.4 seconds, and Bristol University the Women’s prize. With 39 entries apiece in these, these were the most popular events. Edinburgh also triumphed in the Women’s Beginner Eights while Queen’s Belfast took the Open category.

Reading took the first four places in the Open Intermediate Quads, and also won the Women’s event, as well as the Open Intermediate Lightweight Quads. Birmingham University led the field in the Women’s Intermediate Lightweight Quads, Bristol won the Women’s Intermediate Coxed Fours, and Newcastle the Open event.

This put Newcastle and Reading on the top of the leaderboard with five wins each, followed by Durham with three and Edinburgh and Bristol with two each.

Surrey University had originally had the largest entry with 29 crews, followed by Queen’s University, Belfast with 28, Nottingham University with 26, and the two local clubs, Durham University with 24 and Newcastle with 23.

The three host clubs – Newcastle University BC, Tyne Amateur RC and Tyne United RC – did a tremendous job, working together to stage this popular race.