Jesus Bumps Lady Margaret

by Duncan Holland on 9 Jun 2006 This a possibly apocryphal, but certainly possible, headline reporting on a Bumps race at Cambridge. In this article I will try and explain what the bumps are, and how they operate.

Most things at Cambridge are confusing to the outsider, starting with the name. There are at least three major rowing centres round the world called Cambridge. Cambridge NZ, of course; where Rowing New Zealand is based. Cambridge Massachusetts, USA; home to Harvard, and the Head of the Charles Regatta. And the Cambridge of which I write, in Cambridgeshire, England.

This Cambridge is home to Cambridge University, one of the top universities in the world, renowned for high academic achievement. Luminaries of the university include Newton, Rutherford and Hawking.

The University is also home to one of the world’s great rowing centres. The numbers are impressive. Each year about 3000 undergraduates join the university, ‘Come up to Cambridge’ as one says here. Of this 3000, over 1200 row in the Michaelmass (first) term novice races! At the end of the academic year the May Bumps cater for around 1800 experienced rowers. So, each year, well over 3000 people race and train out of a university of 17,000 people.

How is this all organised? Well, at Cambridge a student belongs firstly to a College. A College is an academic and social unit, and offers accommodation and food and academic support to its members, it also the base for sport. The 31 Colleges mostly have Boat Clubs, and these are where most of the students row. The older Colleges boast large and impressive clubs and can often boat 12 or 15 eights at a time. Around a dozen of the clubs have professional boatmen or coaches and they all involve students and old members in the coaching as well.

The water these hordes of people have to row on, and share with a thriving non-student rowing community of eight clubs, is a tiny river. Think of the Avon in Christchurch, and halve it, and you are about right. Training is a nightmare with necessarily strict rules and regulations, and marshals who fine first and ask questions afterwards.

Racing poses special problems and most is done processionally, either Head Races, what we would call time trials, or the famous Bumps. In a bumping race the crews line up in their start order, fastest first, and park alongside the bank of the river with about one and a half lengths of clear water between each crew. At the appropriate signal they all charge off aiming for the finish which is some 5km away. And the fun starts. If a crew catches the crew in front and touches their boat with it’s bow then they have a Bump.

Both crews must then pull in to the side of the river and let the crews behind the race by. If a crew doesn’t get a bump and is not bumped then they must race all the way to the finish and are said to have ‘rowed over’. The next day the whole exercise is repeated with a new start order adjusted by the bumps that have taken place.

The top crew, which starts first, is the ‘Head of the River’. If a crew gets a bump each of the four days of the races they are entitled to their oars, suitably decorated and inscribed. Getting bumped four times brings the ignominy of ‘spoons’ Bumps, and the consequent rise up the table are celebrated at Bump Suppers at the Colleges which are formal meals where the victorious athletes are feted by the college.

The races are organised by divisions of 17, six for men and four for women and there is a waiting list and race system to get to in the bottom division.

A day’s racing takes about eight hours as a division must wait until the previous division has raced and cleared the river before boating. This year’s May Bumps are next week, from the 14th to the 17th of June. ( Yes, I know, but in Cambridge May week is in June!).

I will write again with stories and explanations of overbumps and sandwich boats and such fine terms.