A Boat Race Legend

In its rich 195-year history, the Oxford/Cambridge Boat Race has seen many of its freshfaced, fit and highly intelligent student competitors become well-known. From rowing heavyweights like Sir Matthew Pinsent to actor Hugh Laurie.

Many legends have been a part of the annual Battle of the Blues. Yet their involvement may have lay forgotten. One such legend is James Alexander Macnabb, winner of the 1924 Boat Race for Cambridge and coach of Boat Race crews for a total of five years, coaching Cambridge from 1930-1932 and Oxford from 1949-51.

MacNabb enjoyed a winning streak during his time with the Light Blues, but success eluded him when he switched his allegiance; Oxford lost all three races under his charge. Why switch sides? According to newspapers of the time, the Oxford style was Etonian, using fixed rowlocks and a leader method, therefore they needed coaches who were well versed in that style.

“A Boat Race underdog, a gold-winning medallist on the Seine, and a coach of both the Dark and the Light Blues.”

Born in 1901, Macnabb fits the profile of a Cambridge Light Blue. He was Eton-educated, a Trinity College undergraduate and the 21st chief of Clan Macnab. Sitting in the three seat, Macnabb and his crew entered the 1924 race as underdogs with the odds being four to one in favour of Oxford. Despite being the lighter crew by 2.7kg a man, and having only one returning Blue, Cambridge won comfortably by four and a half lengths. The official time was 18 minutes 41 seconds, making Macnabb’s crew the fastest the Tideway had seen for 11 years. The old adage, watermanship beating weight, came into play.

The Boat Race was only the start of Macnabb’s rowing success that year. In an all Eton, all Trinity crew, Macnabb teamed up with Terrence Sanders, Robert Morrison and Maxwell Eley to race a coxless four. They won the Stewards Challenge Cup at Henley and went on to win a gold medal for Great Britain at the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris. The great Oxford coach, Hugh ‘Jumbo’ Edwards, described the crew as “the nearest thing to perfection I had ever seen”, yet their Paris experience was not without its challenges. At the age of 87, Macnabb recalled: “(But) the big question at this time was the whereabouts of our boat and oars. They had not arrived at the course, nor had they been heard of. We made the journey each day to the Seine where we could do nothing but hang about”. Eventually the equipment arrived, and Macnabb and his team spent their only practice day doing starts and learning to move off when the starter called “Par”, without waiting for the “ti”. The practice paid off and the Third Trinity crew triumphed against Canada in the final. In 1974, the four had a golden jubilee reunion at Henley, where Sanders was quoted as saying: “I don’t know why, but the Lord gave us pace”.

“The big question at this time was the whereabouts of our boat and oars. They had not arrived at the course, nor had they been heard of.”

Like all men of the time, Macnabb was called up for service during the Second World War and served in the Royal Artillery in West Africa and Burma, reaching the rank of Lieutenant Colonel. He was awarded the TD (Territorial Decoration) for his services. A megaphone Macnabb used at Dunkirk in 1940 was brought back to the Leander Club and used for coaching the crews there.

In 1931, Macnabb was elected an Honorary Member of Leander. In 1950, he was elected Honorary Secretary of Leander and reelected the following year, but the unexpected death of the Club Treasurer in September 1951 meant that Macnabb was asked to take on that role, which he held until 1957.

In 1955, he was presented with the Desborough Medal for outstanding services to Leander by the President, Lt Col. CD Burnell.

Macnabb was also Treasurer of the Amateur Rowing Association for 20 years after the war.

Macnabb was a chartered accountant, and away from rowing spent most of his working life in the field of charitable housing in London at the Peabody Trust, for which he was awarded an OBE. Rowing was not Macnabb’s only sporting love. He enjoyed take afternoons off from work to beagle.

Nicknamed ‘the Old Man’ by his family, Macnabb, who was married three times, was a family man. He had four children, James Charles, Charles Robert, Angela and Francis David. Francis was killed in an air crash in Addis Ababa in 1972; as a result, Macnabb took close care of Francis’ children, Ian and Alexandra. Ian MacNabb recalls fond memories of his grandfather, especially watching Chariots of Fire together, the film based on the true story of two British athletes who, like Macnabb, competed at the 1924 Paris Olympics.

Macnabb had no interest in living in Scotland and running the family estate, so relinquished his claim to the Macnab clan on the proviso that his son would inherit the estate.

Macnabb lived out his days close to the Tideway. He died in 1990, precisely one week after that year’s Boat Race. As a Boat Race underdog, a gold-winning medallist on the Seine, a coach of both the Dark and the Light Blues, Macnabb will be remembered for all the work he did to give back to the rowing community. He will go down in history as a Boat Race legend.