As I emphasized several times in the memoir, the Henley Royal Regatta (HRR) is steeped in tradition. The dress code, the tea breaks, and all of that. The HRR will not make changes just to be trendy, but it also knows when important changes are called for. One such change was the addition a few years ago of a full slate of events for women. Here is a women's Eight from Leander Club leaving the dock followed by a picture from their race shortly thereafter. Later in the week a female sculler from Harvard/Radcliffe won the Princess Royal Challenge Cup, the women's equivalent to the Diamond Sculls for men.

With the addition of women's events, the number of crews entering Henley each year now exceeds 450.  To accommodate this, the Regatta now schedules several days of elimination rounds and has extended the formal Regatta to five days. On Wednesday and Thursday, the days before our arrival, races were started every five minutes with two races on the course at any moment in time!

Other traditions go back many decades—namely the dress code in the Stewards' Enclosure. Only at Henley do you find a championship rowing event and a fashion show so uniquely intertwined. I love the hats!  Here are a few that caught my attention this year:

The woman in the center is probably saying, "And where is your hat?"

If the feet hurt badly enough, the shoes come off, even at Henley:

The men are stylish as well:

This dude looks confused, and probably is...

....and here is this year's reenactment of the "Oldest Living Henley Alum."

You can always tell which crews have been eliminated in the early days of the competition. They are in the Stewards' Enclosure wearing their colorful blazers, rather than catching a nap back in their rooms. Such was the case, this year, with the Orangemen of Syracuse who were defeated earlier in the day by Brown University:

I'll close this segment by introducing the "Women of MIT," all of our Reunion ladies fully dressed for the occasion. (Of our group, only Rebecca Barron is missing from this photo.)  Don't tell the others, but the consensus among the men I spoke to was that Hilda Buss, on the far right, took the prize for style.  Hilda, by the way, will be a Freshman at MIT this fall.  She will be a great asset to MIT, in general, and especially to the women's rowing program.