Regatta Entry Information

The Draw

City of Oxford Regatta and Sprint are typically oversubscribed and there is a hard limit on the number of races we can run. Unfortunately, every year we will have to reject crews, often late in the day. Below we’ve described how we create the draw, as well as some tips for not being rejected.

Process and Priorities

  • Our main goal is to fill competitive events, which means running events with 4 or more crews. This is agnostic of boat type, gender, or age categories. We will roll together age groups, move crews, and even offer alternative events to make this happen.

  • Crews with no competition (cannot be combined or moved or with points well outside the range of other crews) will be rejected first.

  • Once we have a list of complete events plus incomplete events (2 or 3 boat events), we’ll then reduce the number of races to the limit. Incomplete events will be removed first. Following that, we may re-consider points or age category combinations. We then consider entry date, payment date and doubling up (non-doubling up crews are prioritised), then boat classes where bigger boats are prioritised. We reserve the right to make final decisions subjectively or with a coin-toss.

  • We don’t look at the overall number of crews entered from one club, nor do we look at doubling up between the two days. We appreciate these may be important for some crews in making the trip, but it adds too much complexity. Our concern is creating a good draw in each session, it is up to entrants to consider the economics of their travel.

  • Sometimes we will end up rejecting entire clubs or individuals in multiple events. We appreciate that this may feel difficult when you’re on the receiving end, but it can just be an unfortunate outcome of the draw process. This is particularly prevalent for low-entry groups like young juniors or older masters.

Many changes in the draw will be communicated via BROE2, for example rejections and combining masters’ events into handicap events. Moving juniors, event types or more complex suggestions will be emailed.

What can you do to help

  • Enter early, pay early. This makes our entry list more certain as we come to close of entries and we can do more pre-work on the draw, as well as better advise people where there is a risk of no-competition.

  • Including in your entry notes any acceptable or unacceptable changes. For example, if you are/are not willing to move to another event, or if juniors are already rowing up an age group. We can’t always use these suggestions, but they help significantly.

  • Be on hand around entries close to reply to queries. We have a hard time-limit to order the numbers so a prompt response is appreciated.

  • Understand that we would much rather have every entrant come and race, but often cannot avoid rejecting some crews.

Refunds

Any crew which withdraws before the close of entries will receive a refund roughly around the close of entries. Please do not put off paying.

Any crew which we reject after the close of entries for any reason will receive a full refund around the time of the draw being published.

Any crew which we offer a reasonable change to (e.g. a masters handicap event) and withdraws because of it will not receive a refund. For a bigger change (e.g. 4x+ to 4x) we expect to offer a refund and this will be communicated directly.

Any crew which withdraws because of changes to another event (e.g. the 8+ is rejected so you want to scratch your 4+) will not receive a refund on the secondary event.

If you are offered a refund, please do not go into BROE2 and withdraw/scratch your crew. This makes it much more difficult to identify the crew and your refund may get missed. We will reject your crew and refund accordingly.