UCD and Trinity launch 75th annual Colours Boat Races

Colours Boat Races to take place through Dublin City Centre on Saturday, March 22nd.

• Trinity Vs UCD event to include 75th edition of the historic Gannon Cup for Senior Men’s Eights and the 44th edition of the Corcoran Cup for Senior Women’s Eights.

• Olympic bronze medalist Daire Lynch to row in 7 seat for UCD Senior Men’s crew and Grace Healy, the country’s Up and Coming Rower of the Year for 2024, to feature in the Trinity Women’s Eight.

• UCD’s Senior Men’s Eight seek to make it four Gannon Cup wins in a row and match Trinity’s total of 37 wins.

• Trinity seeking to stop UCD’s Senior Women’s Eight from securing fourth Corcoran Cup win in a row.

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Dated 18 March, 2025

The 2025 Colours Boat Races will take place on the River Liffey through Dublin City Centre on Saturday, March 22nd.

The annual event, which includes four races in total, sees crews from Trinity College Dublin and UCD race head-to-head over 2 kms upstream and under eight bridges from the starting line at O’Connell Bridge to the finish at Victoria Quay.

The races will include the 75th edition of the Gannon Cup, which has been raced by Senior Men’s Eights from UCD and Trinity since 1947 with the exception of four years, two in the 1950s (1957 and 1958) and two more recently due to Covid restrictions (2020 and 2021).

This year, UCD is seeking to make it four wins in a row in both the Gannon Cup and also in the Senior Women’s Eights race the Corcoran Cup. If successful in the Gannon Cup, UCD will level the men’s overall series at 37 wins each. To date, Trinity have secured 37 Gannon Cup wins and UCD have 36. There has been one dead heat in 1950. 

The Corcoran Cup was originally a Senior Women’s Coxed Four event, but evolved into an Eights race in 1993, due to increased participation by women in rowing throughout the country at this time. UCD has recorded 26 wins in total while Trinity has 17. 

Grace Healy, who was named as the country’s Up and Coming Rower of the Year in 2024, is set to row in the Trinity Women’s Eight and the UCD Senior Men’s crew will feature Daire Lynch, the Olympic bronze medallist, in the 7 seat. 

Lynch, 26 and from Clonmel in Co Tipperary won bronze for Ireland in the Men’s Double Sculls with Philip Doyle at the 2024 Paris Olympics. The two also won bronze in the same event at the 2023 World Rowing Championships in Belgrade. Lynch, who remains part of the Irish rowing squad, studied economics at Yale University in Connecticut in the US, but is now studying medicine in UCD. 

The Colours Boat Races began in 1947 when the(opens in a new window)Gannon Cup was presented in memory of UCD Boat Club Captain Ciaran Gannon who was killed while on active service with the Royal Army Medical Corps in Burma in 1944. 

Since then the list of races has expanded to include the Corcoran Cup in 1980, the Dan Quinn Shield for Novice Men’s Eights in 2004 and the Sally Moorhead Trophy for Novice Women’s Eights in 2005. 

Trinity has won the last four Novice Men’s Eight races and UCD has won two of the last three Novice Women’s Eight races  in 2022 and last year.