After a hiatus for the past two years, the Fours Head will finally be returning to the iconic Championship Course on the Tideway next week. One of the biggest and most hotly contested Tideway Head Races, the Fours Head attracts a wealth of talent to its top categories. This year, I have the pleasure of covering my favourite event of the day – the Championship Coxless Fours.
What would be a long, painful slog in a coxed boat becomes a long, painful slog with the added stressors of steering and race calls in the coxless boats; a perfect storm of sheer difficulty that makes this one of the most formidable challenges in the British Rowing calendar. This year’s roster of fours boasts some pretty special crews, so I’m very much looking forward to seeing how things play out in this famous race.
As ever, I’ll be previewing in detail the crews that I believe will be the ‘ones to watch’ here, before offering a finish order prediction at the end.
Leander (A)
In a field stacked with talent, this one is the standout, and for good reason – they’re the world champions. The combination of Dan Graham, James Robson, Douwe De Graaf and George Bourne recently set the rowing world ablaze with a crushing performance at the Shanghai World Rowing Championships – the crew’s first race together as a combination. Dubbed the ‘Cambridge Four’ by commentators at the regatta, owing to the fact that Robson, De Graaf and Bourne all spent last year with the Light Blues, under Rob Baker’s tutelage, this is a four that has remarkably begun their international journey right at the top of the world.
That’s not to say that these athletes haven’t individually performed towards the top of world rowing already – Dan Graham is no stranger to senior international rowing, while James Robson was the Olympic sweep spare and George Bourne, famously and heartbreakingly, missed out on representing GB in the single scull at the Paris Olympics by a slim margin at the Final Olympic and Paralympic Qualification Regatta. Douwe De Graaf, the youngest member of the crew, is perhaps the most decorated, having won the U19 and U23 World Rowing Championships. It’s no mean feat, however, to come together so late in the season and produce a lineup that can handily win a World Rowing Championship title, and it is a remarkable testament to these athletes. This is their first outing back together since their post-Worlds hiatus (which saw Bourne clutch victory in the Wingfield Sculls), and I do not doubt that they will dominate this field. This is an outstanding combination that I hope will remain together at Caversham and continue to grow from strength to strength this Olympiad.
Oxford Brookes University (B)
An excellent Brookes lineup that will no doubt feel some weight on its shoulders as Brookes looks to put its best foot forward in the wake of a season of massive change. Led by the indomitable Toby Lassen, who has several Henley Royal Regatta wins and U23 golds to his name (and impressively finished sixth at the recent GBRT Trials in the single scull), these guys will be looking to add further success to their careers with Brookes. Lassen is joined by Temple Challenge Cup winner Callum Gilbey, Temple and Prince Albert Challenge Cup winner Richard Hawes (also a U23 world champion), and former Oxford Blue James Doran, who was part of the winning Brookes Ladies and Grand Challenge Cup combinations in 2023 and 2024, respectively. Doran has subsequently been at Caversham, where he rowed as a spare at the Shanghai World Rowing Championships.
This is a quality lineup by any standards, and in years prior, I would have suggested that a Brookes lineup like this might well be in with a shot of winning the event outright – such is the strength and determination of the Brookes programme. Given the presence of the world champions of Leander, I think winning is probably off the cards for this boat – but they’ll undoubtedly be targeting a podium finish, which is well within their capabilities.
University of London (A)
On their home course, UL will be looking to begin the 2026 season with a bang. With the difficulties Brookes faced last year, there was a sense during the season that momentum was starting to shift away from the Oxford-based powerhouse, and UL was the club to capitalise on that shift eagerly. Putting together a fantastic coxed four to take on The Prince Albert Challenge Cup at Henley Royal Regatta, UL finally captured a trophy that had eluded them for years. With several returning athletes in the UL squad this year, they are certainly ones to watch this season.
Several of the returners will be battling it out in this UL combination next week: indeed, three of the Prince Albert-winning four are racing here. Ex-St Paul’s superstar Joe Middleton is joined by David Wallace and Theo Doyle from last year’s Henley Royal Regatta-winning combination. New to the lineup is recent Newcastle graduate Chris Fry, who brings with him plenty of experience. I’m excited to see what this crew is capable of, and indeed, what UL can bring to the table as the season progresses. A challenge to the Oxbridge/Brookes hegemony is desperately needed in the university rowing landscape, and UL might well be the club to do it this season.
London RC (I)
A powerful club entry from the ascendant London Rowing Club. Three Henley Royal Regatta winners populate this lineup: ex-UL athlete Tom Cross and Sean O’Mahony from The Thames Challenge Cup-winning boat, and Ben Edmondson from The Wyfold Challenge Cup. They’re joined by a new LRC member – Thibault Mulot – who might be a familiar name to some readers. Mulot was right at the forefront of the rise of Bristol University’s rowing programme over the past few years, forming an integral part of its first eights that went from strength to strength in domestic and international regattas. He’s an excellent racer and will, I think, be a powerful addition to an LRC squad that is already pretty stacked with talent.
LRC are in an interesting position this year, after a Henley Royal Regatta that saw them almost totally overturn their Tideway-based rivals from Thames. Will London become, in effect, the new Thames – the undisputed premier London-based rowing club, attracting the top gap-year talent each year and consistently winning at Henley Royal Regatta? I think the ball is pretty firmly in the court of Stu Heap’s talented squad, and just looking at some of the other London entries at Fours Head suggests that this may well be another exciting year for the team.
Oxford University BC (A)
Oxford are reigniting the pre-Boat Race tradition of racing at the Fours Head, despite the absence of their Light Blue rivals, Cambridge, who chose to prioritise racing at the Head of the Charles this year. The lack of Cambridge will undoubtedly make this race a somewhat less pressured experience for Oxford, though they will no doubt have Cambridge on their minds, given the back-to-back success of Rob Baker’s squad out in the USA, against arguably the stiffest competition one might find outside of a World Rowing Championships.
This year, then, Oxford are faced with a novel situation as they stare down the barrel of being outright Boat Race underdogs for the first time since 2019. Things for the Dark Blues haven’t been easy over the past few years – bar their golden season of 2022 – and turning the tide this season will be no small feat given the massive influx of talent into the Cambridge camp. Mark Fangen-Hall’s squad definitely does have speed at the top end, however, and much of that will be on display in this lineup, led by ex-Yale Bulldog Harry Geffen, who represented GB in the pair with James Vogel at the Shanghai World Rowing Championships just a couple of months ago. He’s joined by Cal Berkeley graduate Jamie Arnold, who has also rowed at U23 level for Australia; former Harvard oarsman Alex Sullivan, and Alex Underwood, who rowed in Isis in 2024. It will be interesting to see how in-the-mix this crew can be; as much as we are still very early in the season, the Boat Race sneaks up on you fast, and if these guys aren’t firing on all cylinders, I think they’ll be in with a very tough ask come April.
Leander Club (F)
An interesting Leander lineup featuring some very experienced athletes that will be right at the top of Leander’s non-Caversham squad. Experienced ex-Newcastle athlete Ben Brockway is the new name here at the Pink Palace, joining a crew of seasoned Leander returners, all of whom were part of the winning Ladies’ Challenge Plate boat from last season: Alex Abuhoff, the stalwart of the Northeastern 1V; Jack Prior, a classic Brookes success story who is entering his third season with Leander; and Levin Gräf, who plied his trade at Durham before joining Leander.
There’s a ton of U23 and senior international experience in this lineup, and I think they’ll certainly be ones to watch. Leander are in a compelling position given the issues that have befallen Brookes; they are poised, potentially, to recapture the status of the premier Caversham feeder programme that they had lost to the Oxford powerhouse over the past decade or so. With that in mind, I think this crew will have its sights pretty firmly set on beating that Brookes ‘B’ entry, and doing so will put them right up towards the top of this category.
Prediction
There’s plenty of other strong crews that I haven’t directly featured here, but I think the above lineups will be the ones in contention for a podium finish. In terms of a finish order, there’s no way I can look past Leander ‘A’ for the outright win. Beyond that, I think things will be close – but I’m going to go with Leander ‘F’ in second, and Oxford Brookes ‘B’ third.
Good luck to all crews.
Five Man
