I have a strong suspicion that when I die and go up to the great regatta in the sky, my grandfather Dick Phelps will be sat there saying, ‘Who the heck do you think you are? Here’s a rag and a bottle of oil, go varnish that boat’.” So ends my conversation with city financier Richard Phelps, a three-time Boat Race winner (1993, 1994 and 1995), Olympian (1992), Boat Race Umpire (2014, 2019 and 2024), and the new Chair of Henley Royal Regatta.

Photo Richard Phelps, Chair of the Committee of Henley Royal Regatta.

Credit Benedict Tufnell

The Phelps family has a 200-year association with rowing and working on the Thames. It was ‘Honest John’ Phelps who declared the 1877 Boat Race a dead heat. Richard’s grandfather, Dick Phelps, was an acclaimed rower, boatbuilder and boatman who followed in his father’s footsteps by winning the Doggett’s Coat and Badge in 1923. “My grandfather was a huge advocate for women in sport. His mother came from a great sporting family with strong females. He would have been very supportive of seeing more women at the Regatta.”

I’m speaking with Phelps the day after Henley Royal Regatta’s AGM which discussed the Regatta’s newly announced, first women’s intermediate event, The Bridge Challenge Plate. I spoke to him about the push to make the Regatta more inclusive and got his thoughts on what makes Henley so special. But I began by asking him about the Regatta’s path to gender parity.

“In 2015, when Steve [Redgrave] was chair, we talked about increasing the number of women’s events and the term gender parity was used without defining what it meant. When you only had three or four women’s events, you didn’t need to worry about gender parity [because] you could just keep adding [events], and during Steve’s time as chair that’s precisely what we did.”

For the last 18 months the Committee has taken a more strategic approach, says Phelps. “We are going to complete the journey for gender parity, and that means having an equal number of events, and at some point thereafter, an equal number of competitors. At a high level we now know where we are going. It is no longer just about adding one more event, it is about getting to a clearly defined outcome. Creating the first women’s intermediate event was an obvious next step.”

The Bridge Challenge Plate is for women’s eights crews below the top level but above the club and student categories and will make its debut at the 2025 Regatta. The name continues the tradition of naming events after iconic landmarks on the Henley stretch. It also signifies the event’s purpose – to ‘bridge’ the gap between the club/student level and elite events.

Pressed on a timeline for reaching gender parity, Phelps says he is hopeful gender parity by event will be achieved in the next couple of years. He expects to “tell the world” this time next year about which new events will be included. Before that there will be a consultation period with schools, clubs and universities. There are various “possibilities and options”, but a seven-day regatta is not one of them, thus some men’s events, and/or the number of entries in them, will be cut.

“We are not going to go to seven days and there are only so many races that we can fit into a day. Having outlined what gender parity means, an equal number of events is a first step. Whether some events go or some events become smaller is yet to be determined, but it is going to be one of those two things.”

What of the leadership itself? Is there a drive towards gender parity within the Stewards? “Yes,” says the male chair; Phelps smiles, acknowledging the irony. “Over the last ten years there have, by and large, been an equal number of new men and women Stewards. We can’t change what happened way back, but over time there will be an equal number of male and female Stewards.”

A more immediate priority for Phelps is to deliver a Regatta that feels welcoming to female rowers and their supporters. “We need to create an environment where female competitors feel equal on the water in terms of presence and numbers. We need to make sure that the enclosures are equally inclusive, gender and ethnicity-wise, and reflect a broader socio-economic background. Obviously, that needs to be reflected in the leadership, and I’m very confident that over time that’s what we will be doing.”

The AGM also approved a new strategy and vision, another project that has been in works for some time. “We now have a 10-year strategy to 2035 and a very clear vision statement; we are not ready to externalise that yet, but we now know what it means. The Committee is going to use the first part of next year [2025] to turn those strategic objectives into actual initiatives. We won’t be able to do all of them in one go because we haven’t got the bandwidth, and a lot of them will cost money. We want to make sure that Henley Royal Regatta is still the premier regatta in the rowing calendar but is also available to all.”

Ever-changing yet timeless. For all its modernisations there’s a golden thread running through this historic regatta, one which likely lies at the heart of its enduring appeal. For Phelps it is critical that this is not lost nor squandered. But what makes Henley, Henley? What’s the secret sauce? “Anyone who has rowed at Henley probably has their own version of that secret sauce. As a Committee we try and capture what that is, but I think there comes a point where if you try too hard to codify it, you spoil it. It’s a bit of mystery,” says Phelps.

Phelps continues, “What is it that makes the competitor cherish being at Henley? How do you make sure that the Boat Tent delivers that same camaraderie and unique experience it always has in the past? How do you make sure that someone who returns to the Regatta for the first time in decades walks through the entrance of the enclosure and stands there and says, ‘Oh my! Nothing has changed’. When in fact so many things have. How do you make sure someone new to the Regatta, who’s not from our sport, walks into the enclosure and feels like they are in the same world as Grace Kelly was when she visited in the 1950s?”

Some aspects of the Regatta are “iconic and special”, and they must never be touched says Phelps. They are the Regatta’s beating heart, connecting it to its history and heritage, things like the wooden booms or the famous blue and white boat tents; though Phelps is less keen on the changing rooms and cold showers. Perhaps the secret sauce lies in the balancing act of what must remain, what must renew, and what must go.

One wonders if the ‘Great Regatta in the Sky’ might resemble what Phelps envisions for the near future, on this earthly realm, betwixt the banks of Berks and Bucks, with roaring crowds, fizz-filled enclosures, booms, boat tents, and (I hope) cold showers too.

Henley Royal Regatta press release on The Bridge Challenge Plate