Bowden has dominated junior middle-distance events at the national championships over recent years and is expected to give the Canterbury team a dominant edge when he runs the fifth leg.
The other key runners in the Canterbury University team are Gus Taylor, Matt Harris and former Otago runner Andrew Davidson.
A lot will be at stake for Bryce Morgan (17), who is starting for the Ariki team in his first Lovelock Relay race.
Morgan lowered his 1500m time to 4min 04sec on the track last summer, in a season when he emerged as one of the country's most promising younger middle-distance runners.
The Ariki team will be boosted by Wellington's Simon Rodgers, the son of former Olympic runner Tony Rodgers. Simon is studying in Dunedin. Other key runners in the Ariki team are Callan Moody and Luke Hurring.
Canterbury University will be aiming for its third successive and its 18th win since the Lovelock Relay was first held in 1937 to honour Jack Lovelock's gold medal in the Olympic 1500m in Berlin in 1936.
Lovelock studied medicine at the University of Otago and was the first New Zealand athlete to win an Olympic gold medal in the event.
But neither Canterbury University nor Ariki is expected to break the race record run by the Otago University team of Stuart Melville, Alister Stewart, Kevin Darling, Bruce Beath, Lindsay Dey and Trevor Sutherland in 1971. The time was 24min 12.6sec.
The individual record of 3min 52sec was run by former New Zealand representative Andrew Stark (Canterbury University) in the late 1970s.
Canterbury University will also be defending the women's event with its strongest opponent being Hill City.
The Hill City combination equalled Leith's 1989 race record when it ran 19min 46sec in 2006.
Marguerite Buist (Otago University), a former New Zealand representative, ran the women's record of 4min 40sec in 1985.
A total of 61 teams have entered for the event and this equates to between 280 and 300 runners. The races start at the University Oval at 11.10am (men) and 11.50am (women).
