Regatta Stream Stories

Reading Amateur Regatta is changing in 2018

British Rowing’s new competition framework means the loss of status titles such as ’Elite’, ’Senior’, ’Intermediate’ and ’Novice’. Events will be split into bands using the crew’s Ranking Index, a measure based on races won (rather than events won) plus for the first time, the success in processional races (for a full explanation of the new system, please refer to the British Rowing Website.) It is anticipated that this will bring closely matched crews together to ensure close and fair racing.

At Reading the trophies. for the Saturday racing have been reallocated to the top band for each event, covering a much wider range of events.

While Saturday’s events will still take place over the ’championship’ 1500 m course, the Sunday start will be moved 100 m downstream to give a new 1000 m course, half the Olympic distance, which should also promote closer racing.

The ’Mini Regatta’ will now be incorporated into the main Sunday regatta. The original concept of the mini regatta had been to give those crews on the Project Oarsome programme an opportunity to race given there were not many regattas offering such events. Over time the number of regattas offering these events has increased substantially, reducing the demand, plus the removal of the definition of ’Maiden’ from the British Rules of Racing made it more difficult to select the target crews.

The Regatta committee hopes these changes will add to the enjoyment of the regatta.