Fantasy Worlds - Community Report Card
Since I first started doing this, I’ve always been impressed by how powerful the hive mind can be at predicting rowing events - and even more wowed by the fact that despite such strong consensus much of the time, it’s extremely rare for two players to pick the same crews.
In 2023 the Fantasy Henley players predicted 65.38% of the eventual winners correctly.
In 2024 the Fantasy Henley players predicted 69.23% of the eventual winners correctly.
But something seems to be going wrong in 2025!
One of the things that made Fantasy Henley so great in 2025 was precisely how unpredictable it was, the players only managed to select 44% of winners correctly.
But that was good compared to Fantasy Worlds!!!
| Event | Winner | Favourite |
|---|---|---|
| Lightweight Men's Double | People's Republic of China (26.35%) | Germany (69.46%) |
| Lightweight Men's Single Scull | Uruguay (9.46%) | Ireland (44.41%) |
| Lightweight Women's Double | People's Republic of China (63.22%) | People's Republic of China (63.22%) |
| Lightweight Women's Single Scull | United States of America (10.25%) | Greece (32.96%) |
| Men's Coxless Four | Great Britain (42.08%) | Great Britain (42.08%) |
| Men's Double | Poland (2.03%) | New Zealand (26.96%) |
| Men's Eight | Netherlands (3.60%) | Great Britain (82.01%) |
| Men's Pair | New Zealand (17.70%) | Romania (26.40%) |
| Men's Quad | Italy (11.02%) | Great Britain (62.26%) |
| Men's Single | Greece (0.00%) | Germany (33.42%) |
| Mixed Double | Ireland (14.29%) | Netherlands (38.91%) |
| Mixed Eight | Romania (7.46%) | United States of America (35.08%) |
| PR1 Men's Single | Great Britain (66.01%) | Great Britain (66.01%) |
| PR1 Women's Single | Ukraine (36.94%) | Ukraine (36.94%) |
| PR2 Mixed Double | People's Republic of China (26.54%) | Germany (29.32%) |
| PR3 Mixed Coxed Four | Great Britain (83.43%) | Great Britain (83.43%) |
| PR3 Mixed Double | Germany (18.90%) | Great Britain (50.00%) |
| Women's Coxless Four | United States of America (14.53%) | Netherlands (39.03%) |
| Women's Double | Netherlands (25.00%) | Netherlands (25.00%) |
| Women's Eight | Netherlands (8.77%) | Great Britain (48.49%) |
| Women's Pair | Romania (51.14%) | Romania (51.14%) |
| Women's Quad | Netherlands (17.09%) | Great Britain (69.47%) |
| Women's Single | Ireland (1.91%) | Great Britain (77.27%) |
What happened, guys?
Only 30.43% of events were predicted correctly at the World Championships 😱
What made the World Championships so difficult to predict?
Post Olympic years can often be turbulent, changes in coaching & athletes can have an immediate effect on performance.
At the start of an Olympiad nations may also be trying new projects, shifting their attention to new events.
Conditions in China were reportedly very hot and that could have played a part in some athletes not coping as well as expected.
Lots of doubling up - some athletes were racing multiple times, combine that with the heat and it’s going to affect their performance too.
Some brand new events - the mixed events were a great addition but with no form to guide picks, it required a little bit of guesswork!
On the whole it was a great week and a bit of racing (although if they could cram the programme into three days it’d probably be more fun to watch)… which leads nicely to our next event.
Fantasy Charles - A Fantasy Rowing game based on the Head of the Charles which starts on the 17th October.
3 days of racing
Live streamed on YouTube (at a reasonable time of day for European and US viewers)
Junior, Student, Club, Veteran and Championship events with entries from Cambridge University, Oxford University, Leander, Crabtree (with some stacked crews ), Lea RC, Taurus, St Paul’s School, KCS Wimbledon and more from the UK as well as Finn Hamill (the NZ sculler who won the Diamonds at HRR), the Sinkovic Brothers, Sanita Puspure, Karolien Florijn, Imogen Grant and more and more and more… PLUS: Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Washington, Northeastern, Brown etc will all be there in force - it’s your first chance to do some research for Fantasy Henley 2026!
