JRN are delighted to announce that the contest between Newcastle University and Oxford Brookes University on the Saturday of The Island Challenge Cup is our Henley Royal Regatta: Race of the Event 2025.
To truly quantify the magnitude of this tussle, you have to go back a year in time to the same stretch of water. Newcastle, stretching in their infancy as the foremost domestic challenger to Brookes’ brilliance, were outdone on the Henley Royal Regatta straights in the final of The Island Challenge Cup. Their passage to Sunday had featured a couple of classic contests, where the Blue Star rowed back from a deficit to steal the win.
In 2025, the stage was set for a rematch between the country’s premier collegiate rowing institutions. A lot had changed; Oxford Brookes had endured their worst season in recent memory, caught in a storm of speculation and accusation about off-water antics. Newcastle’s ride into Henley had been smoother, but in winning U23 World Rowing Championship gold in August 2024, Holly Youd, their star athlete, was ineligible to compete in this crew. Brookes took the win at Henley Women’s Regatta when both fielded vastly different outfits a couple of weeks earlier, so all eyes were on the burgundy to see if they could make it three match victories in a row.
Newcastle burst out of the blocks as they often do, establishing a lead at the Barrier, but Brookes – famed for their mid-race rhythm – clung on. By the Fawley, both crews were within a few feet of each other, and as the two eights passed Remenham Club, Brookes had taken a slight lead. Momentum is everything in sport, particularly in match racing. At this stage, the crew who have taken the lead usually goes on to win. Newcastle, though, clearly did not get that specific memo; they responded sensationally, re-taking the lead with less than 100m to go and booking their place in Sunday’s showpiece final for the second successive year.
