When The Boat Race Goes Wrong….

A lot can go wrong in a simple two-boat race between Putney and Mortlake – to the delight of some, says Tim Koch of heartheboatsing.com.

The most succinct explanation of a rowing race ever produced was by the Irish world and Olympic sculler, Gary O’Donovan: “There is a start line and a finish line. Yer man says go at the start and there is a hooter at the finish.”

In many ways, the Boat Race is as simple as O’Donovan suggests. Two eightoared boats meet at Putney and point themselves towards Mortlake. Yer man (or woman) says “go” and each crew does about 600 strokes. One gets to the finish before the other. The early arrivals are happy. The latecomers are sad. They do it again the next year.

Of the millions who watch this annual spectacle, either in person or on television, a minority, usually those who claim to know about the sport, are perfectly happy if that year’s “Battle of the Blues” runs according to The O’Donovan Formula. However, the non-rowing majority, “the general public”, probably hope for a little more drama - which they sometimes get.

Approaching Barnes Bridge during the 2016 Women’s Boat Race, Cambridge chose the faster but rougher centre of the river while Oxford took the slower but more sheltered water along the Middlesex bank. (Credit: Tim Koch)

Boris Rankov, a six-times Boat Race winner and four-times race umpire has said that public interest in the event remains high, not because it is about rowing or Oxbridge, but because of it’s charm, a result not only of its history but also of its unpredictably.

The first Boat Race was held on 10 June 1829 on a two-and-a-quarter mile course from Hambleden Lock to Henley Bridge. The earliest instance of the unpredictable contest going wrong occurred less than five minutes into that first ever race. Both crews fought for the stream, there was a clash, the oars locked together and the boats stopped. Oxford won the restarted race easily but perhaps the thousands of spectators present may have thought the clash the most exciting part of the whole contest. If so, similar Boat Race crowds over the next two-hundred years would agree with them.

“Public interest in the event remains high, not because it is about rowing or Oxbridge, but because of it’s charm, a result not only of its history but also of its unpredictably.”

Occasionally, a Boat Race drama will occur not during the race but in the preceding months. While every squad of potential Boat Race Blues will have its share of disagreements, tensions and tears in the run-up to the big day, these are generally kept within the boathouse walls, even in today’s social media age. Very occasionally however, disagreements become so big that there is no hiding them, most notably in the “mutiny” years of 1959 and 1987.

Although twenty-eight years apart, the two so-called mutinies mirrored each other closely. In both, a group within the Oxford squad who disagreed with the existing rowing style and/or training methods put in place by the all-powerful elected Boat Club President had grouped around a talented American (Reed Rubin in 1959 and Chris Clark in 1987) and demanded to boat crews of their own choosing. In both cases, an engaged and outraged but largely ill-informed press and public automatically condemned the Damn Yankees and their followers for apparently desecrating a national institution. In the long term, the rebels were proven to have some valid points but, in the short term, the OUBC Presidents in both 1959 and 1987 stayed in charge, boated “second choice” crews and won their Boat Race.

 In very rough conditions in 1912, Cambridge sank off Harrods and Oxford went ashore after Hammersmith to empty their boat of water. A “No Race” was declared and a re-row was held the next day.

There is one thing above all others that has caused Boat Races to go wrong for one or both crews, that is the wind. When a strong wind blows against the tide, rough water and sinking conditions may result. Of course, buoyant modern boats, often with onboard pumps, do not “sink” as such and, no doubt to the disappointment of spectators, so-called “sinkings” (or properly, “swampings”) have been surprisingly rare on the often turbulent Thames Tideway.

Since the women’s race moved to the Thames Tideway course in 2015, only the Cambridge boat in 2016 has filled to the gunwales with a few gallons of Thames water in midrace. On the men’s side, Cambridge sank in 1859, 1912 and 1978. Oxford went ashore to bail in 1912 and sank in 1925 and 1951. There were rerows in 1912 and 1951 so only three men’s races (1859, 1925 and 1978) have been decided by one crew “sinking.” However, innumerable races have been decided by superior watermanship and/or coxing when both crews stayed afloat but one dealt with rough water better than their opponents.

The rowers get the glory but the Boat Race is, above all, a coxswain’s race. Steering the “S” shaped fourand-a-quarter mile course with its narrow, mysterious and unmarked “fastest line”; the snap decisions needed to deal with ever changing conditions and circumstances; the requirement to coach and cajole, to motivate and to berate an increasingly exhausted crew all require a “very particular set of skills.” If a cox gets it right, few will notice or acknowledge but, if they get it wrong, millions of armchair experts will take note.

“Buoyant modern boats do not ‘sink’ as such, no doubt to the disappointment of spectators.”

The Oxford men’s cox in 1987 and the Cambridge men’s cox in 2023 both made early, spectacular and decisive decisions when they immediately moved from the rough water in the centre of the river to the relative shelter of the Middlesex shore at the start of their races. In the aforementioned women’s race of 2016, the Oxford cox cut to the more sheltered but slower water on Middlesex twice during the race, two risky moves that she got away with.

Perhaps the most obvious recent example of a cox getting it wrong was actually before a race. During their warm up for the 1984 race, the Light Blues’ cox steered his boat into a moored barge, destroying the bow which angled itself 45-degrees upwards. The race was rescheduled for the next day but, rowing in a borrowed boat, Cambridge lost by 3 3/4 lengths.

If a sinking cannot be produced, the next best crowd-pleaser is a clash of oars as coxes fight for the best line. However, this is a very dangerous game for a coxswain to play as there is no predicting who will come off worse if blades make contact. Five minutes into the 2014 men’s race, there was a comparatively light clash of oars in neutral water between Cambridge’s “2” man, Luke Juckett, and Oxford’s “7” man, Sam O’Connor. Either could have suffered from this but it was Juckett who spectacularly crabbed, broke his rigger’s backstay and missed five strokes. Oxford pulled away to win by eleven lengths.

Perhaps an even more thankless role than that of a coxswain is that of the umpire. One of the wonderful and archaic things about the Boat Race is that it is umpired by a Blue, a former competitor who will, of course, be a product of one of the two universities. Legend has it that crews do not want to race under an umpire from their own boat club, their logic is that these all- powerful offcials are so concerned not to be seen in favour of their own shade of Blue that they will actually be biased against it.

A modern example of an umpire making a controversial decision that some say went against his own university was in the 2001 men’s race. Thirty-seconds into the 2001 race, Oxford were ahead but there was a clash and Cambridge lost an oar. Umpire and Oxford Blue Rupert Obholzer decided on the Boat Race’s first ever restart (as opposed to re-row), half-way along the Putney Embankment. Cambridge eventually won but some of the Dark Blue persuasion said the race should not have been stopped after the clash. However, if Obholzer had disqualified one crew in the first twenty strokes, it would have been a very hollow victory for the other and a poor reflection on the Boat Race. Only one Blue Boat race has ever been decided on a disqualification, that of December 1849 when Cambridge fouled Oxford.

The 1903 Boat Race was an example of one that actually should have been restarted - but was not. First time umpire and Cambridge Blue, Freddie Islay Pitman intended to start the race with an ancient pistol. Both crews had squared their blades on “Are you ready?” but the gun would not fire. The boatman holding Cambridge allowed the boat to slip out of his hands but Oxford were being firmly held awaiting the shot. By the time a distracted Pitman got the pistol to fire, both crews were racing but Cambridge had gone first and Oxford never recovered from their late start and lost by six lengths.

Inevitably, the personalities and/ or decisions of certain coaches have caused Boat Race dramas both public and private. The 1958 Oxford mutiny mentioned above was in part the result of ex-RAF Group Captain “Jumbo” Edwards, the Dark Blue coach, imposing strict (some would say childish) standards of obedience, behaviour and dress. As an example, he caused Charlie Grimes, an Olympic Gold medalist in the 1956 US Eight and a man so powerful that there was a problem balancing the boat on his side, to resign from the squad because Edwards insisted on him removing his blue pin-striped “locomotive driver’s hat” during practice.

Equally, in the 1987 Oxford mutiny also mentioned above, the relentlessly competitive and uncompromising character of the Oxford coach, Daniel Topolski certainly played a major part in producing a Boat Race that spawned two books, a feature film staring Dominic West, endless column inches and, seemingly, a rehash on every significant anniversary. Was it significant that a young Dan Topolski had been coached by an old Jumbo Edwards?

Only once has a particular and little-recognised Boat Race official been accused of getting it wrong. This was the finish judge of the 1877 Boat Race. Strangely, the 1877 race is legendary in Oxbridge rowing circles not for something that clearly went wrong, Oxford’s bow oar snapping in mid-race, but for something that an informed minority hold actually went right. This was the brave decision of the finish judge, the professional waterman John Phelps, to declare the only “Dead Heat” in Boat Race history, an event in which a “win-lose” result is usually the strict norm.

Since 1878, the finish line has been marked by what eventually became the University Stone on Surrey and the University Post on Middlesex but, for the first twentyseven Boat Races over this course, there was no “line of sight” to judge a very close finish so Phelps bravely gave the only result possible under the circumstances. While the verdict was not seriously contested on the day, a story soon grew up that, even though it was 8.50am, Phelps was “drunk under a bush” as the boats finished and that he awoke to slur “Dead Heat,” adding under his breath, “to Oxford by six feet.” This was pure fantasy but many think it too good a story to question or not to perpetuate.

The 95th Boat Race went wrong not for any participants, coaches or officials but for John Snagge, the radio and television commentator and the BBC’s “Voice of the Boat Race” between 1931 and 1980. Of the millions of words he spoke in that role, ten would come back to haunt him.

In 1949, Snagge’s launch had engine problems and fell far behind the race as it approached a close finish. Under pressure to keep talking, the veteran commentator found himself saying: “I don’t know who’s ahead, it’s either Oxford or Cambridge.” Thereafter, Snagge was remembered not as the man who made the 1944 BBC announcement of the D-Day invasion of Europe or as the introductory voice to the hit BBC comedy series, Dad’s Army, but as the originator of those ten words which he said stuck to him, like a tin can tied to a dog’s tail.

Today, most top-level boat racing is done in a straight line on sterile, human-made, multi-lane 2,000 metre courses that are constructed to try and give constant conditions to compete under. Crews on these courses may have raced each other before and may have the chance to race each other again. The O’Donovan Formula mostly applies to such events but the Irishman’s précis does not fully encapsulate the Putney to Mortlake experience.

The 6.8 kilometre P to M “Championship” Course is a random product of nature that comes with tides, bends, shallow parts, deep parts, rough water, flat water, headwinds, crosswinds and tailwinds. Two Boat Race crews will go straight to the final and race each other once and once only (the only time the same crew raced twice was Cambridge in 1888 and 1889). The result is binary - win or lose.

In such circumstances, an awful lot can happen between yer man saying “go” at the start and the hooter at the finish - but surely that is the reason for the enduring appeal of nearly two centuries of the national institution that is the Boat Race.