Grum. starts Sunday on 321, four points clear of CLURRACKS. Five players sit inside 13 points of the top. Saturday's round-up flagged the contested championship finals where the chasing four disagree with the leader — and most of them are on the water today. Here's what the picks say.
The Locks
Open Championship 4x — Reading A | 83.76% The most-backed crew of the entire BUCS card. Five-sixths of the room have Reading A through. Newcastle (4.12%) and Durham (4.90%) are the only counter-picks above 4%. The contrarian's race in the loudest possible sense — if Reading A misses here, the leaderboard is rewritten on a single result.
Open Championship Lightweight 4- — Cambridge / Durham A Not a single-horse lock, but a clean two-way one. Cambridge (Victor Viennot-Bourgin) leads at 47.57% with Durham A (Lachlan Alexander) chasing at 33.24%. Together that's 81% of the field on two boats. Queen's (8.65%) is the only credible spoiler underneath.
The Toss-Ups
Women's Championship 8+ — the race of the day for prediction value. Four crews within 5.3 percentage points:
- Brookes (Sophie Reinehr) — 21.57%
- Cambridge (Carys Earl) — 19.04%
- Newcastle (Megan Johnston) — 18.78%
- London (Sophie Wrightson) — 16.24%
Edinburgh (9.90%) and Durham (9.64%) round out the contenders. Whoever calls this gets a clean swing on the leaderboard.
Open Championship 4+ — the four-way scrap the round-up flagged:
- Brookes A (Ethan Lennard) — 33.70%
- Durham A (Sebastian Iles) — 23.91%
- Newcastle (Imy Woodcock) — 13.59%
- London (Sophie Wrightson) — 12.50%
The favourite has barely a third of the room. Most of the field is wrong here whichever crew wins.
Women's Championship 1x — Reading A favourite, but the room is hedged:
- Reading A (Meg Knight) — 49.19%
- Reading E (Finnola Stratton) — 16.13%
- Birmingham (Kathryn Mole) — 8.33%
- Bath A (Rebekah Court) — 6.99%
Knight already has the Women's Champ 4x and 2x in her column on paper. The 1x is the third leg of the sculling treble — but at 49% the room isn't fully bought in, and Reading E is the most-picked counter at 16%.
Women's Beginner 4+ — a dead heat at the top:
- Edinburgh (Beatrice Elsmore Wickens) — 20.60%
- Queen's A (Michelle Taylor) — 20.60%
- Cambridge A (Yohana Gasu) — 11.54%
- Nottingham A (Megan Marshall-Horne) — 9.07%
Two crews tied to the second decimal place. Pick the wrong one of the two and you're on roughly 4-in-5 odds of being on the same side as half the leaderboard anyway — but the upside is in the long tail.
Women's Intermediate 8+ — Brookes A clear of the field, but only just:
- Brookes A (Olivia Dodrill) — 34.19%
- Cambridge A (Imogen Breeze) — 21.08%
- Durham A (Lizzie Way) — 10.54%
- Edinburgh (Megan Bromham) — 9.51%
30+ crews in this category and 32 of them sit at fractions of a percent. The contrarian gold here is Cambridge A or Durham A; everything else is a punt.
Open Beginner 8+ — most evenly split race on the Sunday card. The leading call sits at just 14.57%:
- Brookes (Santiago Garcia Navarro) — 14.57%
- Imperial (Raphaël Delforge) — 8.15%
- Surrey A (Theo Kousiounis) — 7.90%
- Sheffield (Verity Bowrey) — 7.41%
- Newcastle (Laurie Gilroy) — 7.16%
- Nottingham (Arthur Bindemann) — 6.17%
Six crews inside the top 14%. A coin flip at this depth — most of the room is going to be wrong, and the right answer is worth real points to whoever finds it.
Quick Numbers
- Reading A in the Open Championship 4x (83.76%) — the most-backed crew of the entire regatta is on the water today
- Open Beginner 8+ — leader at 14.57%; six crews inside the top 14
- Women's Beginner 4+ — Edinburgh and Queen's A tied to two decimal places at 20.60%
- Women's Championship 8+ — four crews within 5.3 points
- Open Championship 4+ — favourite (Brookes A, 33.70%) has none of the top five backing it
Good racing!
