For those of you who made it all the way to May without knowing what Roses is, it is a varsity competition between Universities of York and Lancaster, showing off what University Sports can have to offer. It started in 1965 with a boat race between the two universities.
The last time the York’s teams were in Lancaster was two years ago, the first in-person Roses since 2019 due to the Covid Lockdowns. It was a bloodbath. One of the worst Roses defeats York has faced so far. It’s very common for the home team to win, however, last year, the competition was hosted at the University of York, York lost again. This put York and Lancaster at an equal score. This year, York could really do with a win or else they may be playing catch up for some time.
With that out of the way, let’s see where we are at the moment. While the vast majority of events happen on Roses weekend itself a few events occur in the week leading up to it. The 27th of April saw the rowing races, and the 5km running races. In the rowing races, York won all but the Open Novice 4, and the Open Novice 8. This gave York 14 points and Lancaster 2 points. The running races saw York win the Women’s 5km and Lancaster win the Open 5km, giving both teams 4 points. The 29th of April saw the Equestrian events. In these Lancaster won the Open 1sts giving them 4 points, whereas York won the Open 2nds only giving them 2 points.
This has left the scores at the time of writing as follows:
| Lancaster University | University of York |
| 10 | 20 |
With the stakes as high as they are and the vast bulk of the competition still to go, only time will tell whether York can pull ahead or whether Lancaster will leave York behind.
To keep up with what’s going on this weekend go to https://roseslive.co.uk/ and make sure to follow York Vision on social media to keep up with our reporting on the event as we have a full team of match reporters in Lancaster over the weekend!