Navigating the Squall

Sarah Winckless: A Life in Sport

© Benedict Tufnell

This year’s Men’s Boat Race umpire, Sarah Winckless MBE, is making history by being the first woman to umpire the men’s race on The Championship Course in London. She has herself competed three times in the Women’s Boat Race, so brings a wealth of experience both as an athlete and as an umpire.

The 2025 race marks ten years since the women’s race moved from Henley to London. The Olympian and two-time world champion is an advocate for the Huntington’s disease community. Sarah tested positive for the Huntington’s gene in 1997 while studying at Cambridge University and has family history of the hereditary degenerative condition. 

In her book, Illness as Metaphor, Susan Sontag distinguishes between the “kingdom of the well” and that of the “sick”, ascribing the more “onerous citizenship” to illness, or as she puts it “the night side of life”. We all prefer to use the good passport, writes Sontag, but sooner or later each of us is obliged to identify ourselves as citizens of that other place.

Is knowing when, why or how one switches kingdoms a blessing or a burden? The thought crosses my mind as I’m greeted by a lovely labradoodle with woollen sports socks hanging from her mouth. From behind the door, Olympic rowing medallist and Boat Race umpire, Sarah Winckless MBE welcomes me into her home.

“Knowledge is power,” says Sarah, now sat at her kitchen table, coffee in hand, recalling the moment she was told her mum had Huntington’s disease. It was hard to hear, but the diagnosis did not come as a complete surprise. For years Sarah and her family had witnessed the decline of her mum’s physical and mental condition. “I could start to understand the behaviour I was seeing in mum, and her behaviour towards me.”

Huntington’s disease is an inherited disorder that causes progressive damage to nerve cells in the brain. A parent with the gene for Huntington’s has a one in two chance of passing it on to their children. The symptoms include personality change, and a gradual loss of mental ability, coordination and movement. There is no cure.

Six months after her mum’s diagnosis Sarah decided to get tested for the faulty gene. It was 1997 and even without the prospect of an incurable, lifechanging disease hanging over her, the 24-year-old Natural Sciences student in her final year at Cambridge had more than enough on her plate; her schedule strained with academic and sporting pressures. The test came back positive.

Huntington’s was to be in her past, present and future.

Growing up

“My parents split up when I was three or four. Mum went around the house cutting all the light [cords] so that when dad came to get his stuff, he couldn’t see anything. She had us [Sarah and her older brother, Charlie] bouncing on the beds to break them. As a three-year-old it’s like, this is the best divorce ever, why are we suddenly allowed to bounce on the beds!? My poor father must have arrived with literally no lights.”

If asked, says Sarah, her father, Bob Winckless, a three-time Cambridge Blue and renowned rowing coach, would say that her mum, Valerie, had already begun to change because of Huntington’s disease.

The family moved to Kingston where Valerie married Olympic rowing silver medallist Mike Hart, with whom she had two more children, John and Imogen.

“I had nothing more to give. In the last few hundred metres I started to go blind and deaf, my body went into the darkness.”

“You learn to make sure the system works. You’re expected to fit in; to be seen and not heard. I came from a split family doing their best. It was difficult at times, but it made you resourceful and [taught you] not to expect things to go well. I’d love for things to go well but if they don’t, I just get up and go again.”

The impact of Valerie’s undiagnosed Huntington’s was increasingly felt. “Our relationship was difficult,” says Sarah, who is unsure exactly when the disease first started to impact her mum, but knew it had by the time Sarah was ten years old.

“We knew mum wasn’t right, but we were quite an isolated family. The changes were gradual, so we didn’t quite know how bad it was or how quickly she was declining.” Reality hit hard on annual visits to Henley Royal Regatta. “People would come up and ask me, what’s wrong with your mum? I’d say, well that’s just mum.”

“We had our heads in the sand. I don’t know if it was the right thing to do but we tried to help mum do it her way. I look back and think, well, we were probably all struggling with the truth, singularly as a family, while doing our best to support each other.”

“She changed doctors when they tried to tell her something was wrong. Mum knew she was ill. She had her mercury fillings removed because she was worried they were poisoning her brain, and she became homeopathic because she [was sceptical of] western medicine. She talked about her time working in Max Perutz’s lab†, pushing mercury around on the desks, which clearly we wouldn’t do now. So, she knew something wasn’t right, but we, as a family, tried to get on with it. It was mum, she was a member of our team.”

As a young teen Sarah would wake early and cook breakfast for the whole house before getting her younger siblings up and ready for school. In the evenings she’d do more chores. “Mum couldn’t parent at that point and there were a lot of us to parent. She needed me to help at home. I was happy to help but I also wanted to be out doing sport. I remember bargaining for £35 to do a week’s athletics.”

Despite her stepfather’s and father’s rowing pedigree, Sarah’s first sporting loves were netball, basketball and athletics. As a junior she competed for England in the discus. Three times a week she’d travel across London (from Surbiton to Lewisham via Waterloo) to be coached by John Hillier, a 1974 Commonwealth Games medallist. “There was an awful lot of travel and helping-with-the-family time.”

International competition added to the strain. “The pressure got to me, and I became less tolerant [towards mum]: it was difficult,” says Sarah. “I’d get back to Heathrow and sit on my bag not knowing where to go. I’d been thrown out of one home, leaving in a teenage strop, feeling like the world was over. At the time I competed very poorly because you don’t compete well with all that stuff going on.”

“I don’t feel that way when I’m in a boat. Rowing is a world in which I feel I belong.”

Stability came in the form of an academic scholarship to Millfield School, where she boarded for two years in the sixth form, starting in 1990. “Suddenly there was no commute, I had my own room, and someone else was doing the cooking. It was extraordinary. I remember thinking, what do people do with all this time? Five extra hours a day and stability during term time.”

Bliss, albeit with schoolyard taunts. “What did they call me? Helga the Russian shot putter. That wasn’t kind.”

The distraction-free study time was enough for Sarah to get a place at Cambridge University.

University sport

At Fitzwilliam College, Cambridge, Sarah began to unlock her rowing talent. “University was amazingly freeing. I’d dreamt of being an international discus thrower but hadn’t achieved it and I’d snapped my anterior cruciate ligament, so basketball and netball were both out; I knew I was never taking those all the way. I was free to learn a new sport.”

Despite her injuries Sarah earned a Blue in four different sports. Three times she represented Cambridge against Oxford in rowing (1995, 1996, 1997), twice in basketball (1996, 1997) and once in netball (1994). And in each of her four years at Cambridge she represented the Light Blues in athletics (1994-1997).

Did her father’s and stepfather’s rowing records add pressure? “Initially I was rowing to make my body stronger; a different beast to allow myself to do better at other sports. Theirs were massive shoes to fill, and I genuinely never thought about filling them. The pressure came from within, and from the stories I’d heard around the dinner table growing up, about the joy and pain of winning and losing Boat Races.”

Sarah made rapid progress in her new-found sport. Despite less than perfect nutrition – she lived off pasta, butter and tomato ketchup – she was selected to race for Cambridge in the 1995 Boat Race.

“I was afraid of losing, but if you put yourself on the start line you must be prepared for that. I was the worst in my boat by a long way, and very aware of it. Instead of doing my part to win a varsity match, as I had done in netball and athletics, I was now worried about losing a varsity for my crew. My technique was vulnerable.”

Oxford were heavy favourites, but Cambridge prevailed, Sarah was hooked. She went on to win two more Boat Races, the last as President. “My poor body didn’t know what rest was. I was on my bike all the time and training for three sports at once.”

By her final year she was on the fringes of the British Rowing team which meant regular trips to London. “Returning to Cambridge, I vividly remember coming off the M11 and as I put my indicator on these hot tears came out of my eyes: I knew as soon as I stopped, I was going to have to face how far behind I was at what felt like everything.”

Two weeks before her last Boat Race, Sarah partially subluxed her knee playing varsity basketball. “Ron [Needs, Cambridge women’s rowing coach] was not happy about that. We won the match but the next day I limped out of my car. It wasn’t great.” “1997 was the year I found out I carried the Huntington’s gene. It was a year I wouldn’t wish on anyone,” says Sarah. “I was young, not arrogant, but you think you’re going to be lucky; you think you’ll get good news. It was a big shock. But I wanted to know. It’s different for each of my siblings.” Sharing the result with her siblings wasn’t easy. “We were all trying to work it out in our own way.” The first sibling to get tested (by ten or more years), Sarah is the only one of the four to have the gene for Huntington’s.

“In the same year I’d bought a house!” she says, smiling. “My dad was amazing. We were worried that if I tested positive, I’d never get a mortgage. This really worried him. Before the diagnosis he helped me with the deposit and found an insurer that wasn’t going to ask about my genetic status. When I tested positive, I thought ‘Thank God we got that sorted!’”

International honours

Sarah made her Olympic debut at the Sydney Olympics in a hastily put-together women’s double. She’d expected to race in the British women’s quad, in which she’d secured Olympic qualification and a World Cup gold medal, but three weeks before the Games she suffered a rib stress fracture which ultimately cost her her place in the quad.

She finished ninth in the double. The next day she listened to the commentary while hiding behind the grandstand as her former crewmates in the quad raced their final. “I wanted them to do well and [at the same time] I wanted them to do badly,” says Sarah. They won silver. “It took me 24 hours to say well done because I didn’t want my emotions to ruin their day.”

Sarah overtrained and missed the 2001 season due to the “deep mental scars” of Sydney. She worked with a sports psychologist to recover, and returned to the quad in 2002 and 2003, each time missing the podium. “When you’re not on the rostrum the cavern can feel so vast.”

Success waited just around the corner: at the home of the modern Olympic Games. In 2004, for the Athens Games, Sarah and Elise Laverick were selected to compete in the British women’s double. They produced a gutsy final to secure an Olympic bronze medal. “I had nothing more to give. In the last few hundred metres I started to go blind and deaf, my body went into the darkness. I kept thinking, don’t let Elise down. I was counting strokes.”

Before the 2004 Games Sarah had decided to go public with her, and her mum’s, Huntington’s story. “It felt like the one thing I could do that might make a difference. I didn’t know if I’d ever have that platform again.” She has since inspired many of those whose lives are impacted by the disease, most notably through her longstanding role as Patron of Scottish Huntington’s Association. In 2005 and 2006 Sarah won consecutive World Championship gold medals, the second of which she received months after the competition had ended. The Russians had been disqualified for doping, denying Sarah the chance to be crowned world champion in front her home crowd at Dorney, Eton.

“It was a dark period,” says Sarah, who agonised over the defeat, “to go from feeling like we – or I – had let the side down to realising we’d been beaten by cheats”. Her disappointment later prompted Sarah to volunteer her time with UKAD, the UK Anti-Doping organisation, where she became a Board Member and the first female chair of their Athlete Commission.

Her last international competition came in the women’s eight at the Beijing Olympics, a return to the eights rowing she first learnt at Cambridge. It wasn’t to be a golden goodbye. Several team members were struck down by illness during the regatta. Despite this the crew still finished in fifth place.

Like many athletes Sarah found it hard to part ways with elite competition. “One more! It’s addictive, isn’t it? It’s hard to stop when you’ve put so much into it, and you’ve built your skills up.” In fact, she did race once more in the British women’s eight, as a last-minute super sub during the 2009 Henley Royal Regatta, where she’d coached a men’s club crew to the final. They lost but she won.

Umpiring The Boat Race

When Sarah was first asked to consider becoming a Boat Race umpire, she said no. Life was too hectic for umpiring. Having retired early in the London 2012 Olympiad she was busy launching her career in sports leadership, which led to her becoming Chef de Mission of the 2018 Commonwealth Games, and as a leadership and performance coach.

The Boat Race organisers were boosting their stable of umpires, particularly those with Tideway know-how, ahead of the women’s race relocation from Henley-onThames to London, due in 2015. “I hadn’t had that opportunity to row a Boat Race on the Tideway. I’ve raced that course in singles, quads and eights and I’ve spent a lot of time on the Tideway, but I hadn’t done that,” says Sarah.

Her curiosity was piqued. “I looked in the mirror and thought: are you too busy for this, or are you just too scared?” She set about learning how to umpire. “I wanted to understand how I could be the best Boat Race umpire I could be.” Her path to qualifying meant weekends spent umpiring grassroots rowers on rivers up and down the country.

“I love that, especially when it’s someone’s first time racing, I want them to have a good experience. I don’t want them to be shouted at by an umpire. I want them to feel like the umpire is working with them. As an athlete I got loads of things wrong, your brain is busy worrying about your performance. I’ve always seen the athletes as trying to do the right thing and just needing a bit of guidance.”

Sarah became the first female Boat Race umpire in 2015 when she umpired the Women’s Reserve Race. She umpired the Men’s Reserve Race the following year, and that summer umpired a race at Henley Royal Regatta, the first woman ever to do so. The Women’s Boat Race 2017 saw Sarah become the first woman to umpire a Boat Race on the Tideway. Three years on she was set to be the first woman to umpire the Men’s Boat Race, but Covid put paid to that, the 2020 race was cancelled, but she achieved the feat in 2021 in Ely, Cambridgeshire. It was the first time Ely had hosted the Women’s Boat Race; the men raced there last in 1944 during the Second World War.

What many are unaware of is that in the interim between the cancelled race and the Ely encounter, Sarah was diagnosed with breast cancer. “That was a real shock. I said to myself: ‘Stop. You’re resourceful. Your friends will be there for you. The worst has happened, the Bogeyman has come, but you’re still OK.’ I was lucky; I got a good cancer diagnosis – stage one breast cancer. I had a lumpectomy and radiotherapy. My radiotherapy finished on Christmas Eve, and I got my Covid injection on the same day. It was the worst idea; I felt awful on Christmas Day!”

Thankfully Sarah responded well to treatment. “It’s absolutely sorted.

It is a delight and a privilege, I’m very lucky,” she says on her good health. More acutely than most, she understands Sontag’s words, she knows we will all be required to use the other passport one day. “I don’t feel regrets at all, but [I am] more resigned that Huntington’s is likely to be my fate.”

The conversation returns to The Boat Race 2025. Mindful of her duties come race day, she remains impeccably impartial. But what of her own performance? With a wealth of experience on and off the water, does she still get nervous? “I hope I present as confident, but don’t think for a second that imposter fear and difficult moments aren’t happening beneath the surface: they absolutely are.”

So, what keeps her coming back? “It is incredible to be a part of The Boat Race family, and very special for those involved. It is a peak moment.”

We’re nearing the finish line but as Sarah places her empty mug in the sink she has a notion. “There’s an interesting dance, isn’t there?” she says. “If I didn’t get nervous, I’d wonder what was going wrong. I hated being nervous before matches, but I wanted to be because it meant my body was ready.”

“I’ve always had an attraction to pushing myself to do things that scare me, or that I don’t think I can do. I seek them out. I don’t like heights, but I’ve jumped out of a plane – though I wouldn’t do it a second time. When I go skiing, I spend the whole time properly scared; I’m not good at it, but I don’t want to recede from the low level I’m already at.

“I don’t feel that way when I’m in a boat. Rowing is a world in which I feel I belong. Whether I’m rowing, coaching or umpiring, it is a family I feel welcome in and an environment I thrive in. It gives me so much more than I give it. I’m very thankful to it.”

There’s no doubt the feeling is mutual.