In order to facilitate racing over 75 boats on each side, the starting order of bumps racing is split into more manageable divisions (often shortened to ‘Div’) of 12 boats, numbered consecutively from the top, starting at one. Torpids has six divisions per side (i.e. Open and Women’s) and Eights has seven.
Division timings
On any given day, divisions are run from bottom to top (i.e. from division six or seven at around 12:00 to division one at around 18:00). In Eights, all divisions are an hour earlier on the Saturday to allow the organisers time to reopen the river and to give rowers more time to prepare for the evening festivities (Torpids, having one fewer division, doesn’t require this).
Divisions run at quarter to and quarter past the hour, and alternate between Open and Women’s. The side that gets which timing alternates between events, with a separate tracker for Torpids and Eights. I’ve tabulated the side expected to take the quarter past slot for the next few years below.
| Year | Torpids | Eights |
|---|---|---|
| 2025 | Women | Women |
| 2026 | — | Open |
| 2027 | Open | Women |
| 2028 | Women | Open |
Note
The alternation is between events, not necessarily years! That means that, should Torpids be cancelled in 2027, the Open divisions would then be expected to take the quarter past slot in 2028!
Sandwich boats
In order to facilitate movement between divisions, the boat at the top of a given division rows at the bottom of the next division at bungline 13. This allows them to bump ‘into’ the division by bumping another crew down into the division below. Due to their being ‘sandwiched’ between two divisions, such boats are called sandwich boats.
Being a sandwich boat is no enviable task — the requirement to row in two divisions means doing two races in one day!
Fixed and Rowing On divisions
Within each side, the top four are the fixed divisions, and remain constant between years (with the exception of scratches and re-insertions), owing to the fact that crews in these divisions are more reliably entered into racing.
The bottom two/three divisions are the Rowing On divisions, because participation in them requires successful completion of the rowing on qualifying race. This allows new crews to enter the start order.
Half divisions
In the event that a bumps event cannot be run safely with all crews, a potential contingency is to reduce to half divisions. In this case, the top three divisions are split into divisions of six boats each — division 1 splits into division 1a and division 1b, division 2 into 2a and 2b, and 3 into 3a and 3b. These divisions then take on the originally planned race timings for the original divisions, so Div1a takes Div1’s slot, Div1b takes Div2’s, Div2a takes Div3’s, and so on.