Wallingford Regatta, formerly the Wallingford Skiff Regatta, was the only organised boating community in 1949 on the longest stretch of the Thames between locks (Benson to Cleeve Locks). It had taken place every year in peacetime since the late 1890s, and there is evidence that it existed as early as 1861. In 1949 the regatta committee founded the Wallingford Rowing Club, which started competing in other regattas. The regatta was developed as a conventional regatta although it still awards the Wallingford Skiff Regatta Cup. The town hosts the Wallingford Rowing Club, the Oxford Brookes University Boat Club. and the Oxford University Boat Club.