See also Liz's Henley Boat Races photo gallery.

With the world's media coverage focused on the Oxford and Cambridge heavyweight men's boat races on Sunday, it's sometime easy to forget that the annual series between the two universities includes five other events.

The women's blue boats and their reserves, Blondie and Osiris, along with the men's lightweight 1st and 2nd crews and the women’s lightweight boats, race over 2000m at Henley each year, starting near to where the Royal regatta finishes and racing, with the stream, to the Bucks side of Temple Island.

The 2006 races took place on Saturday in changeable weather conditions, which threw up everything from bright sunlight to hailstones, horizontal rain and thunder and lightning, rounding off the day with a rainbow just in time for the prize giving. About the only consistent factor throughout the day was the strong tail wind blowing down the course, which combined with a fast stream, produced new record times in all five events, as well as bringing with it the prospect of rough water for the hwt men's races on the Tideway a mere 24 hours later.

With the Henley Races lacking the media attention give to the men's blue boats, the crews are predominantly made up of non-international undergraduates and the percentage of non-British oarsmen and women is considerably lower.

Organisers are rumoured to be looking at the possibility of moving the women’s blue boat race to the Tideway, which, if it happens, is likely to result in increased interest from female internationals but the change is at least a few years off, as it would require changes to the sponsorship and funding structure.

Cambridge had an almost clean sweep in 2001, winning all but the men’s lwt reserves race, but since then Oxford has dominated the winner’s board, taking victory in all but two of the twenty races held between 2002 and 2005. This year showed little change, with all but one of the races going to the Dark blues.

The closest race of the day was the lightweight women, which Cambridge won by a canvas, breaking the course record by 15s. The women’s blue boat also provided some excitement as Cambridge kept reducing Oxford's 1/2 length lead to 1/4 length, only to have the Dark Blues move away again. Oxford held on to win by 1/2 length in 5:44, breaking the course record by 16 seconds. Their second crews winning women's reserves race by 21/2 lengths in yet another course record (5:54).

The winning Oxford women's Blue boat contained three Americans: Grace Riekenberg (Manzano High School, New Mexico and Kansas State); Claire Norsetter (Madison West High School and Yale) and their cox, Megan Patrick (Blackhawk High School and Princeton).

Results and full crew lists are available at http://www.henleyboatraces.com/results.asp