What are Bumps, Torpids and Summer Eights 

The biggest rowing races in Oxford (and The Other Place) for students takes the form of bumps racing, which happens for four consecutive days. This isn’t side-by-side and it isn’t a time trial - instead, it’s a mad race to catch the boat in front of you before the boat behind catches you! Each boat (eight rowers and a cox) starts from stationary, the same distance apart. Then, when the cannon goes off, everyone starts racing. Your aim is to catch up with the boat in front of you, and ‘bump’ them. A bump can be physical, where the boats knock into each other, or the boat in front can concede the bump before they actually get hit. But you can’t just blast it out of the gates and then run out of energy, because there’s also a boat behind you trying to bump you! So it’s a tactical race as well, and the cox has to decide if you’re going to catch the boat in front of you, or play it safer and avoid being caught by the boat behind. Your race can be anything between 100 metres and 2 kilometres!
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If you bump the boat in front of you, your cox will steer you out of the race and you get to stop rowing. If you are bumped, then you either have to keep going (in Torpids, Hilary Term) or you also get to steer out of the race (Summer Eights, Trinity Term). The two boats involved in the bump will then swap places in the starting order for the next day. Ultimately, the aim is to finish higher up on the river than you started! If you bump up every day, you are awarded blades. If you get bumped every day, you are awarded spoons (but we don’t want spoons). The boat starting order on the first day of racing is determined by what happened on the last day of the event last year.
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Torpids and Summer Eights are very similar, with two key differences. First, if you are bumped in Torpids, you have to keep rowing until you reach the end of the course or bump another crew in front of you. Secondly, Blues rowers aren’t allowed to row in Torpids. Oh, and the weather is usually much better for Summer Eights!

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Rowing On

This is the qualifying race for M2, W2, M3, W3. It is essential you make yourself available for this as we need to qualify!! Race times would be between 10am and 4pm on the Saturday - confirmed closer to the time. Simple explanation: divs 4-7 are not fixed. Each crew needs to qualify through a sufficiently fast time at rowing on. Crews that qualify are inserted at their current position in the divisions. Crews that don't qualify are removed and all crews move up to fill their space. Crews that are not currently ranked and do qualify are randomly inserted below the last ranked qualifying crew. All this means that M2 could be in div 7 or get moved up to div 6. W2 is probably div 6 (but still could theoretically row in div 5). Its likely, but not definite, that W3 and M3 would row on into div 7. However nothing is certain until results of rowing on and the resulting draw is released.

Useful links

OURCs Information: https://ourcs.co.uk/racing/summer-eights-2026/

The 2025 finishing order that acts as the start order for 2026: 2025 Finishing order

Interactive page for viewing all Bumps leaderboards from history: bumps.live