Game Changer

Ten years ago, for the first time ever, the men’s and the women’s crews were announced at a joint event.

^{Words: Rachel Quarrell / Photos: Benedict Tufnell}

On 8th February 2012 the Boat Race made a ground-breaking announcement: that the men’s and women’s races would be jointly and equally sponsored. This kickstarted a careful timeline leading to the women joining the men’s event on the Tideway in 2015, an historic change for what was then a 187-year-old men’s contest, brought about after more than a year of discussion and negotiation. A few months later London 2012 crystallised the sense that women’s sport was on the rise, with the first Olympics at which every single country had at least one female athlete on its team. Rowing was riding the wave, oarswomen Heather Stanning and Helen Glover memorably winning Team GB’s first gold medal of the home Games.

It was during the next year’s Boat Race season that the main effects of the extraordinary rowing decision began to be visible. Although the women would have two more years competing as they had done for several decades as part of the Henley Boat Races a week before the men’s race in London, on Monday 4th March 2013 for the first time ever the four openweight crews were announced and photographed together at a joint weigh-in. Before this the women’s clubs had spent twelve months recruiting coaches, administrators, physios, boatmen, and building up their equipment fleets.

“In 1927 women were told (by male physicians) that competitive rowing would damage their health. How completely times have changed.”

That crew announcement ten years ago, albeit a nervous moment for the oarswomen who had to stand on the scales in public for the first time, was earth-shattering.

Before this the only TV coverage of women rowers given equal billing with men had been at the Olympics, at a pinnacle of talent and singleminded focus which feels out of reach to many in the sport.

By comparison the Boat Race feels achievable. Every year students take part who did not start rowing until their late teens, from many different subjects, countries and backgrounds. The very peculiarity of it being “the same two crews in the final every year” — because this is not an open competition but a two centuries old private rivalry which the world has decided is worth watching — makes the Boat Race relatable. Women had won rowing Blues for years but away from the international spotlight, unseen and too often uncelebrated. Now, in 2013, the female rowers were having the same experience their male counterparts plus a handful of female coxes had been part of for many decades.

As the media flocked around to interview the 2013 women’s Presidents, young women watching could imagine themselves in front of the microphones. A new women’s trophy was created in 2014 and in 2015 the final merger of the two events happened, Oxford versus Cambridge men and women across a single Boat Race afternoon on Saturday 11th April 2015, both televised live in full.

The rare clash with that year’s Grand National, also a BBC crown jewel, gave presenter Clare Balding a hard choice. In the end she opted for gender equality over her own love of horses, covering the first parity Women’s Boat Race instead of Aintree before being whizzed at 30 knots back in a boat to Putney to follow the men’s race too. Despite the equine clash five million people in the UK watched the women’s race live, with many more catching up later, plus the usual millions watching around the world on other broadcast stations.

There were ripples outside rowing too. For institutions as historic and venerable as the Oxford and Cambridge University men’s boat clubs to share their fame and fortune in such an unprecedented way with the support of two forward-looking companies made others consider change. Within a few months of the first joint Boat Race in 2015 the Oxford and Cambridge Varsity rugby match had also become a permanently combined event, the women’s match held before the men’s on the hallowed Twickenham turf. In more recently-established student sports this might not seem unusual but for older rivalries such as rowing, rugby and football the Varsity events and the clubs which compete in them pre-date national governing bodies and often formal rules in their sports. The men’s clubs have jealously guarded their prestige for years with a weight of tradition hard to overcome, but it seems as if the Boat Race’s realignment broke through barriers. Football’s first double-header Varsity match was held in 2017, joining the zeitgeist just as better funding, publicity and reportage of women’s ball sports was becoming common in the UK. With national profile for women’s teams came sponsorship opportunities, professional coaches and, within a few more years, women’s sport editors on the national newspapers.

The women’s boat club move to join the men’s Tideway event – now unifyingly called “The Boat Race”, was logistically challenging enough to take three more years after the sponsorship announcement. Not because the race was longer: female crews have been unconcernedly racing the 4.25-mile Women’s Head on the same course in the reverse direction since 1927, and at full pace against the clock for the whole distance rather than in a two-crew contest. But there were extra complications fitting more races into the short-lived Tideway maximum stream period, allocating supporters’ boats and safety cover, even finding temporary homes for the visiting crews. Now the Blues alternate along the Embankment: at the eastern end of the Putney Hard Cambridge and Oxford men boat a few doors apart from King’s College School and Westminster School boathouses respectively while at the western end Cambridge’s women are hosted by Thames Rowing Club and Oxford’s by Imperial College Boat Club next door. The men and women of each university cheer one another on, share dinners and home boathouses, and wear the same racing kit.

In 2015 TV history presenter and former Oxford men’s boat club president Dan Snow said, “Most televised sport is a carnival of misogyny so it is great news that the Boat Race is leading the way in ensuring that women take their rightful place alongside men”. Ten years ago the storming of the allmale Boat Race stronghold was headline news, now parity in sport is the aim rather than the exception.

In 1927 women were told (by male physicians) that competitive rowing would damage their health. 2025 sees the ten-year anniversary of the joint event and two years later the Women’s Boat Race will turn 100. How completely times have changed.

^{Rachel Quarrell lectures in Chemistry at Oxford University and was a women’s rowing Blue for Oxford in 1991. She is The Telegraph’s rowing correspondent and a regular writer for Row360 for whom she covers most World Rowing and Olympic regattas.}