The commission members were looking so much forward to the race last year, until everything had to be cancelled at the last minute. “Everyone was anxious to start, and some of the commission members hadn’t experienced the race before and had been working towards to this moment all year long,” says Paula van Praagh, fourth-year student at Fontys and secretary of women’s student association Animo, which organizes the race. “It was really something to look forward to at the time after a couple of months of lockdown, and tickets sold like crazy. We sold five hundred tickets at once. But when it turned out that we couldn’t go through with the event, we still had to pay back the service costs.” And the association hadn’t counted on that cost item.

Tickets had been sold via a ticketing service, which charges cost of a ticket for services rendered. “Fortunately, it didn’t lead to financial stress, but it can’t happen again”, says commission member Quinta Bonekamp, fourth-year student of Industrial Design at TU/e. In order to prevent a similar service cost debacle this year, the association decided to keep ticket sales closed for the time being.

Uncertainty remains

“The uncertainty remains, even though the government announced relaxations of the corona measures,” Van Praagh says. “Our latest date for opening ticket sales is early May. Another complicating factor is that the municipality still has to issue a permit for the event. We’re lucky in a sense, because most of the persons who will be rowing in the same boat live in the same house, and because most participants are younger than 27.”

Nevertheless, the commission came up with several scenarios, so that the race can take place this year no matter what happens. Van Praagh: “The biggest question remains: how many tickets are we allowed to sell? We now expect to sell some two hundred tickets, half of what we sold last year. But the other scenario is that we’ll sell fewer tickets. That means selecting at the entrance, and only allowing specific teams to compete.”

The commission doesn’t want to let it come to that. The main goal is to see the old familiar faces again. “We mostly want to receive our usual guests. We’ll wait until next year to attract external parties, once everything hopefully gets back to normal again.”