City of Oxford Sprints 2026

This year’s climactic event in the UK adaptive rowing calendar, City of Oxford Sprints, was made all the more poignant by honoring adaptive rowing pioneer from CORC, Andy Weekes. Andy Weekes was one of the very first trailblazers in the adaptive community starting an adaptive squad in 1998 and introducing adaptive competition to the City of Oxford Regatta the following year. British Rowing published a piece on his vibrant legacy this week – “City of Oxford Royal Regatta to crown first adaptive Victor Ludorum winner”

Big congratulations to Stratford Upon Avon for taking home the first ever Adaptive Victor Ludorum prize awarded in Andy’s honor (see photo below). The competition was the stiffest in UK adaptive history with 16 events featuring 8 clubs from Pengwern to Fulham Reach.

Andy was also a central member of the founding group of adaptive rowing leads who started the transformation of adaptive rowing exactly 10 years ago at the CORC event. In August 2016, CORC had done its typically masterful job of organizing “pararowing” races, but at the end of the day, the assembled group – Andy, Nick Steel, Chris Boys, Mark Dewdney, Rachel Lunney and myself (all but Nick and Andy together in photo below) – got together and went through all the things that were simply structurally wrong with community rowing for disabled athletes and decided to do something about it:

· Imbalanced Competition – Due to the huge disparities in impairment within each of the pararowing classifications (the only way adaptive racing was done back then), all of the races were severely imbalanced making them no fun for the victor or victim. Solution: The time-handicap system which levelled the playing field in the same manner that golf handicapping does.

· Singles Only – Pretty much all of the competition at the time was individual racing in singles. This limitation both added to the complexity and logistics of having the manage lots of boats and made it much harder to start rowing for certain impairments (eg. visual impairment, learning disability, arm amputation/deformity). Solution: The “Supported Adaptive Double” format which is now how the majority of adaptive racing takes place.

· Limited Information – At the time, the British Rowing website had exactly two articles on adaptive rowing. Solution: I set up this website as a catalogue of adaptive welcoming clubs, events, universities as well as now over 300 posts on the broader topic including equipment, events, guidance and profiles.

· Lack of Coordination – At the time, the various few clubs that had adaptive rowing initiatives were all doing their own thing mostly figuring things out for themselves with little support and resources from BR. Solution: The group decided to set up a task force to drive and support adaptive rowing which they dubbed the Community Adaptive Group which would meet periodically both as a steering group and as forum for the broader community. The CAG has now grown to include multiple working groups including Rowing with Epilepsy, Coastal Rowing, Junior Pararowing, and Neurodiversity in Rowing.

Huge thank you to Falcon Boat Club who have been generously providing their clubhouse lawn for the exclusive use of the adaptive competitors. The space provides an uncrowded area close to the boating and access to the accessible clubhouse which makes all of the access so much easier for the athletes and supporters. They even erected a marquee to provide some share. #gamechanger

Congratulations to the race winners: