THE 48th Fullers Fours Head, held from Mortlake to Putney today at 1.15pm, has again been oversubscribed with the 550-crew maximum entry reached well before the closing date. The event has a new look this year with crews starting in their boat types: quad sculls, coxless fours and coxed fours, rather than in the order they finished last year. The innovation is welcomed since it will lead to fairer racing and a better crowd spectacle.

For spectators, it is a question of blink an eye and you will miss an international, since Great Britain performers are with their club crews, although Matthew Pinsent and James Cracknell, still on their respective honeymoons, will not be defending their coxed four title for Leander. This boat class is led off by Cambridge, starting 194th as Goldie IV, with a crew stroked by Tim Wooge, their new German president. Wooge stroked Cambridge to Boat Race wins in 1999 and 2001, but took time out in 2000, when he was trialling for Germany, and 2002, when he concentrated on academic work.

His squad this year includes a number of top overseas personnel, including men from Harvard who won at Henley last summer. One of these, Wayne Pommen, is in the coxed four with Wooge and another, Hugo Mallinson, is in the Cambridge top coxless four, with James Livingston, Cambridge’s only other returning Blue, which also leads off its division, starting 117th.

Matt Smith, Oxford’s new president, has also won two Boat Races, one in 2000 when he was the youngest Boat Race winner at 18 years, eight months, and one last March when he again hit the headlines by stroking Oxford to a win in the closing few strokes. Smith strokes Oxford’s No 1 crew, a coxless four, on Saturday, racing as Isis I and starting 123rd. He, too, has a Henley Regatta winning Harvard man with him in the person of Matt Daggett.