Sport plays a prominent role in the society of the Isle of Wight , an island that is part of England.
The island is well known for its cycling, and it was included within Lonely Planet's Best in Travel Guide (2010) top ten cycling locations. The island also hosts events such as the Isle of Wight Randonnée and the Isle of Wight Cycling Festival each year. A popular cycling track is the Sunshine Trail which starts in Newport and ends in Sandown.
There are rowing clubs at Newport, Ryde and Shanklin, all members of the Hants and Dorset rowing association.
There is a long tradition of rowing around the island dating back to the 1880s.
In May 1999 a group of local women made history by becoming the first ladies' crew to row around the island, in ten hours and twenty minutes. Rowers from Ryde Rowing Club have rowed around the island several times since 1880. The fours record was set 16 August 1995 at 7 hours 54 minutes. [1]
Two rowers from Southampton ARC (Chris Bennett and Roger Slaymaker) set the two-man record in July 2003 at 8 hours 34 minutes, and in 2005 Gus McKechnie of Coalporters Rowing Club became the first adaptive rower to row around, completing a clockwise row. [2]
The route around the island is about 60 miles (97 km) and usually rowed anticlockwise. Even in good conditions, it includes a number of significant obstacles such as the Needles and the overfalls at St Catherine's Point. The traditional start and finish were at Ryde Rowing Club; however, other starts have been chosen in recent years to give a tidal advantage.
Cowes is a centre for sailing, hosting several racing regattas. Cowes Week is the longest-running regular regatta in the world, with over 1,000 yachts and 8,500 competitors taking part in over 50 classes of racing. [3] In 1851 the first America's Cup race was around the island. Other major sailing events hosted in Cowes include the Fastnet race, the Round the Island Race, [4] the Admiral's Cup, and the Commodore's Cup. [5]
There are two main trampoline clubs on the island, in Freshwater and Newport, competing at regional, national and international grades. [6] [7]
The Isle of Wight Marathon is the United Kingdom's oldest continuously held marathon, having been run every year since 1957. [8] Since 2013 the course has started and finished in Cowes, heading out to the west of the island and passing through Gurnard, Rew Street, Porchfield, Shalfleet, Yarmouth, Afton, Willmingham, Thorley, Wellow, Shalfleet, Porchfield, and Northwood. It is an undulating course with a total climb of 1,043 feet (318 m).
The island is home to the Isle of Wight Warriors, a motorcycle speedway team, who have competed in the British speedway leagues at Smallbrook Stadium.
Following an amalgamation of local hockey clubs in 2011, the Isle of Wight Hockey Club now runs two men's senior and two ladies' senior teams. These compete at a range of levels in the Hampshire open leagues. [9]
The now-disbanded Ryde Sports F.C., founded in 1888, was one of the eight founder members of the Hampshire League in 1896. There are several non-league clubs such as Newport (IOW) F.C. There is an Isle of Wight Saturday Football League which feeds into the Hampshire League with two divisions and two reserve team leagues, and a rugby union club. [10] [11]
The Isle of Wight is the 39th official county in English cricket, and the Isle of Wight Cricket Board organises a league of local clubs. Ventnor Cricket Club competes in the Southern Premier League, and has won the Second Division several times. Newclose County Cricket Ground near Newport [12] [13] opened officially in 2009 but with its first match held on 6 September 2008. [14] The island has produced some notable cricketers, such as Danny Briggs, who plays county cricket for Warwickshire.
Hampshire County Cricket Club have played County Championship matches on the Isle of Wight in three separate spells. The club played two matches at the Victoria Recreation Ground in Newport in 1938 and 1939 and returned to the island to play seven matches at the J. Samuel White's Ground in Cowes, one each season from 1956 to 1962. [15] Hampshire played another County Championship game on the Isle of Wight in 2019, at the Newclose Ground. [16] A scheduled 2020 Royal London One-Day Cup match was shelved when the tournament was cancelled due to the COVID-19 pandemic in the United Kingdom. [17]
The Isle of Wight competes in the biennial Island Games, which it hosted in 1993 [18] and again in 2011. [19]
There are eight Golf courses on the Isle of Wight.[ citation needed ]
There are three clubs on the island - Sandown & Shanklin, Isle of Wight and Ventnor, each running more than one side and who compete in the RFU Leagues typically playing against sides from Hampshire and West Sussex.
The annual Isle of Wight International Scooter Rally has since 1980 met on the August Bank Holiday. This is now one of the biggest scooter rallies in the world, attracting between four and seven thousand participants. [20]
The Isle of Wight is an island, county and unitary authority in the English Channel, 2 to 5 miles off the coast of Hampshire, across the Solent. It is the largest and second-most populous island in England. Referred to as "The Island" by residents, the Isle of Wight has resorts that have been popular holiday destinations since Victorian times. It is known for its mild climate, coastal scenery, and verdant landscape of fields, downland, and chines. The island is historically part of Hampshire. The island is designated a UNESCO Biosphere Reserve.
Newport is the county town of the Isle of Wight, an island county off the south coast of England. The town is slightly north of the centre of the island, and is in the civil parish of Newport and Carisbrooke. It has a quay at the head of the navigable section of the River Medina, which flows northwards to Cowes and the Solent. In 2020 it had an estimated population of 26,109.
Ventnor is a seaside resort town and civil parish established in the Victorian era on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight, England, eleven miles (18 km) from Newport. It is situated south of St Boniface Down, and built on steep slopes leading down to the sea. The higher part is referred to as Upper Ventnor ; the lower part, where most amenities are located, is known as Ventnor. Ventnor is sometimes taken to include the nearby and older settlements of St Lawrence and Bonchurch, which are covered by its town council. The population of the parish in 2016 was about 5,800.
The Isle of Wight Central Railway (IoWCR) was a railway company on the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom. It was formed in 1887 by the merging of three earlier railways, the Cowes and Newport Railway, the Ryde and Newport Railway and the Isle of Wight Railway,.
The Isle of Wight Railway was a railway company on the Isle of Wight, United Kingdom; it operated 14 miles of railway line between Ryde and Ventnor. It opened the first section of line from Ryde to Sandown in 1864, later extending to Ventnor in 1866. The Ryde station was at St Johns Road, some distance from the pier where the majority of travellers arrived. A tramway operated on the pier itself, and a street-running tramway later operated from the Pier to St Johns Road. It was not until 1880 that two mainland railways companies jointly extended the railway line to the Pier Head, and IoWR trains ran through, improving the journey arrangements.
Blackwater is a village on the Isle of Wight, England. It is located about two miles south of Newport, close to the geographic centre of the island. It is in the civil parish of Arreton. The Newclose County Cricket Ground is just to the north of the village.
Rookley is a village and civil parish on the Isle of Wight. It is located five kilometres south of Newport near the centre of the island.
Southern Vectis is a bus operator on the Isle of Wight. The company was founded in 1921 as "Dodson and Campbell" and became the "Vectis Bus Company" in 1923. The company was purchased by the Southern Railway before being nationalised in 1969. In 1987, the company was re-privatised. In July 2005, it became a subsidiary of Go-Ahead Group.
Hampshire Rugby Football Union is the governing body for rugby union in the county of Hampshire, England. It represent clubs sides not just from Hampshire but also from the Isle of Wight and the Channel Islands, who take part in many of the competitions organized by the Hampshire RFU.
Newport railway station was established in 1862 with the opening of the Cowes and Newport Railway. It was enlarged in December 1875 when the lines to Ryde and Ventnor were opened. The station was also used by the Freshwater, Yarmouth and Newport Railway from its opening in 1888 until 1913, when that company opened its own station nearby. Upon the formation of the Southern Railway in 1923 reverted to using this station. The station was closed by British Railways in 1966. It was then used as a base for the Wight Locomotive Society until January 1971, when it was demolished.
Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service was the statutory fire and rescue service covering the Isle of Wight off the south coast of England. On 1 April 2021, it merged with Hampshire Fire and Rescue Service to form Hampshire & Isle of Wight Fire and Rescue Service (HIWFRS).
There once existed a 55+1⁄2-mile (89.3 km) network of railway lines on the Isle of Wight, which operated both as a self-contained railway network, and as links to ferry services between the island and the South coast of Great Britain. The routes were opened by several companies between 1862 and 1901 and modernised after The Grouping in the 1920s. Most of them were permanently closed between 1952 and 1966, whilst the 8+1⁄2-mile-long (13.7 km) Island Line was temporarily closed in 1966 and rebuilt for electric train services, introduced in 1967. Replacement trains were introduced in 1990, and again in 2021 along with a major renewal of the line. A further 5+1⁄2 miles (8.9 km) have reopened as a heritage line known as the Isle of Wight Steam Railway and there have been several proposals to expand the network further since the 1960s, either with conventional heavy rail or by conversion to light rail.