Ely Head Race 2026 – Race Report

Having been cancelled last year 2025, because of access difficulties at our site, our rowers were more excited than ever in the run-up to our Ely Head Race. This British Rowing event always attracts a wide mix of rowers from near and far, attracted by our perfect racing water, the Adelaide Straight, home to Cambridge University Boat Club and for good reason! The river from Littleport to Queen Adelaide is wide, slow-flowing and almost dead straight. We did have a few mats of floating pennywort to contend with, but not much river traffic or feathered friends to navigate on the day. 

 The EHR offers two different distances, 3km and 5km, for all classes of boat, and including novices (those who have been rowing for less than one year). It is the second of our two annual British Rowing events, with the first being the Great Ouse Marathon held every September. Ely’s racing gang had trained hard for this occasion on the water and in the gym. Bring it on! 

Imagine our dismay, then, when the week running up to the head race saw some of the thickest fog ever! Ely and the low-lying fens can see some pretty ghastly weather in autumn, but this was unexpectedly bad. All of our Saturday outings the day before were cancelled due to the thick fog, and there was much weather checking and contingency planning… However, Sunday dawned, and conditions were clear and calm. Racing was definitely ON! 

All three divisions were busy, with novices and juniors in Division 1, and masters and senior crews across Divisions 2 and 3. Division 2 included a whopping 56 crews – mainly singles and doubles – while Division 3 featured a bumper 16 eights. The flat water resulted in some very competitive times for all crews: the fastest crew of the day over the 5k course was Jesus College Boat Club’s men’s eight with a blistering 17m:13s, while on the women’s side, Jesus College and Caius College’s speedy women’s eights shared top honours with a direct tie on 18m:51s. IOERC saw some personal bests, including the women’s eight who achieved their best ever time over the 5km of 20m:02s and came in ahead of many college crews (and a few more once the magic Masters C adjustment turned that into 19m:31s …!).   

As always, our wonderful volunteers pulled together to make this a successful event. We thank the umpires, events group, management committee, catering team and everyone else who pitched in. Special mention must go to our legendary barbecue king, Edu, and his right-hand man Neil, for being simply unstoppable on the day despite blood, sweat and tears! And also a big shout-out to Ben from WNRC, for subbing into a double at zero notice and doing a heroic job! 

The results can be found here. The winners went home with engraved pots and a sense of accomplishment for every training session that built their resilience, fitness, skill and determination. Well done and thank you to everyone who came to race and support IoERC on the day.