PROFILE

Noam Mouelle: A Quiet Leader

The stakes are high for Noam Mouelle, the Cambridge Men’s President. The Boat Race 2026 is his last shot at racing for Cambridge on The Championship Course and he hopes to extend his history-making, unbeaten Boat Race record, this time as a Light Blue leader. One misstep and his last dance could end in defeat. But first, Mouelle must make the Cambridge Blue Boat, not an easy task, even for a three-time Boat Race winner, and despite his impressive resume, he of all people, knows the pain of missing out.

“You win or you lose,” says Mouelle. The 24-year-old French physicist could be talking about The Boat Race, but he isn’t. “In a split second this huge guy throws this other huge guy on his back, and out of nowhere that’s his fourth Olympic gold. Crazy! The thing about judo is, it’s so spectacular.”

As the mid-afternoon Putney traffic grumbles along the Lower Richmond Road, Mouelle sips his Americano. “One of my best sporting memories of all time,” he says of Teddy Rinner’s winning throw at the 2024 Paris Olympics. Judo is Mouelle’s first sporting love, he started at age five, four years before taking his first rowing strokes.

“I was a bit too scared of hurting myself, but I enjoyed judo. I should have stuck with it, especially given the culture in France. It’s a big deal there. I stopped because my parents couldn’t drive me to training. They were working too late, so I was always late.”

Noam Mouelle, 2026 Cambridge University Boat Club President

Sport and study have always been in lockstep in Mouelle’s life. “I can’t imagine one without the other,” says Mouelle who hopes to finish his PhD this summer. “I love science because I love studying nature and understanding how things work. That’s my passion, I find it fascinating. At the same time, I really like maths. The thing that combines both is physics. Physics uses maths to understand how the universe works. Doing homework for these subjects never felt like work.”

After school Mouelle moved to London to study and row at Imperial College. “To do sport at a high level you must cook for yourself, sleep well, and manage your time properly. I struggled during my first year at university; stupid things like I didn’t know that you can drink too much coffee. I was studying a lot so I started drinking a lot of coffee. I had terrible headaches.”

Gallantly, Mouelle tries to explain his doctoral research to me, which has something to do with dark matter, ultra-cold atoms, and might lead to the discovery of new particles, but, sadly, even the simple version is a bit much for my grey matter so the information passes through like a laser between atomic clocks. “Two black holes colliding create ripples in space time, so actually the distance between the two atomic clocks oscillates. It is like a telescope but not with light.” He pauses, registering my glazed bewilderment. “It is always hard to explain in one sentence because it sits between several different fields.”

Soon Mouelle will be forced to choose between his two passions in life. “The Olympics has always been my dream. I needed to improve so I came to Cambridge. Focussing on The Boat Race for four years gave me a clear goal. I might have a shot at Los Angeles, but I just don’t think I’m strong enough and I don’t think I row well enough to compensate for that. It isn’t impossible, but I’d always be the last guy into the boat. I’d always be in a tough spot. In that sense spending four years training full-time to have a small hope of being the last guy in the boat – just doesn’t make sense.”

Mouelle learnt to row just outside of Paris, on the river Marne at his local club, Société Nautique du Perreux (SNP); nudged by his mum to get outside more. “It wasn’t a top club. It didn’t medal at the National Championships, but we had a good generation of guys start at the same time. We rowed together every year and started to win medals; that put the club on the map,” says Mouelle, crediting his first coach Pedro Sanz, an ex-international from Venezuela. “He built a high-performance programme, out of nothing.”

Mouelle had no connections to the sport before joining SNP, but his neighbourhood did. “There’s always been boats with oars there,” says Mouelle. “When rowing arrived in France it was natural for this area to develop clubs; there’s a big history of painters painting the river and rowing scenes. Now, within two kilometres, there are three or four clubs which are super competitive: not dissimilar to Putney. It has the same vibe, people who live in Le Perreux-sur-Marne know about rowing which is uncommon in France.”

Thoughtful and measured, Mouelle is a pleasure to chat with, we’re sat in a quiet corner of The Half Moon pub, a stone’s throw from the start line of The Championship Course, but it’s clear presidential pressures are weighing heavily on the Frenchman.

“It’s hard to explain why I’m more nervous and stressed, but it’s definitely there. Usually I’m good at switching off, but this is another level; one I didn’t expect. In previous years, in the lab or out with friends, I’d completely forget about rowing, but now it’s always on my mind. I’m always checking my notifications in case someone has an issue.” Mouelle smiles. “It’s cool though, just another project to manage in parallel with everything else.” The physicist put himself forward for the presidency as a way to give back to the club, which clearly means so much to him. He thought the role would entail “small, boring admin tasks” but has been pleasantly surprised.

“No one tells you how to be president: you learn on the go. As president you have to manage both your own performance and the performance of the squad, and that’s a challenge. You have to keep an eye out for what other people are doing. If you let things slide or you don’t manage certain aspects of training, things go downhill quickly. Not that they have, but just realising that that possibility exists is kind of crazy. A lot can go wrong.”

“You have to speak up and show leadership. I’m not super outgoing so I have to make an effort to do those things. I guess what’s stressful is knowing that my natural tendency is to stay quiet. I’m always wondering is this okay or should I be saying something now? I’m still quiet compared to most guys, but my confidence has built over the years.”

Cambridge have won the last six out of seven Men’s Boat Races. What’s their secret? “We have a big culture of buying-in and listening to the coaches and doing everything we can to get better. That was a big thing in 2023. We were such underdogs: there was no other option but to trust in the process and trust in the programme, otherwise you’d go crazy.”

“It doesn’t matter what you’ve done before, who you’ve rowed with, where you’ve rowed, or what medals you’ve won. We’re on the same level and we all buy-in.”

A clean slate is particularly pertinent for one of the new recruits who faced off against Mouelle last year. 2025 Oxford Blue Felix Rawlinson spent last season trying to end Cambridge’s winning run, now he hopes to extend it. True Blue film buffs will remember switching sides can leave a nasty taste in the mouth. Nowadays, not so much.

“Felix has been great. He is keen and trains super hard, not just on the water and on the erg, but also in the social environment. He’s outgoing and always cracking jokes. He is a great guy to have around. What he has done before, no one is really interested in this.”

The Boat Race 2023

Mouelle’s own flawless Boat Race record belies an altogether more testing time. His debut in 2023 saw some of the roughest conditions on record. “The craziest by far - that race is engraved on my brain. The conditions were terrible, I remember seeing them and thinking, wow this is going to be tough.”

An instinctive gamble by the Cambridge cox, Jasper Parish, who cut the first corner and traded stream for shelter, was a race-defining moment. “I didn’t really understand what JP was doing, but we came in and back out and we were ahead. I vividly remember seeing the back of Oxford’s bow-seat. Oxford were not giving up; they were so close. I was super lucid. After that it was fourteen minutes of intense focus; focussing on not mucking up. We did it! At the finish the only feeling in my body was relief.”

Mouelle made history. He became the first Black man to race in The Boat Race. “To be a trailblazer isn’t my goal, but to do what I’m doing to the best of my abilities is. Of course, if anyone is inspired then I’m happy,” says Mouelle. He follows in the footsteps of fellow Light Blue, Daphne Martschenko, the first Black Boat Race rower who first competed in the Women’s Boat Race in 2016.

Mouelle is at least the fifth French person to compete in The Boat Race, and the first to complete a hat trick of victories. William Henry Waddington, François de Rancourt, Bastien Ripoll, and Myriam Goudet precede Mouelle. Curiously, Mouelle’s counterpart at Oxford, Tobias Bernard, was the next Frenchman to race The Boat Race when he coxed Isis (the Oxford Men’s Reserve crew) in 2024 and the Blue Boat in 2025. It is the first time in history that two Frenchmen have been elected as presidents of their teams.

Waddington, who won in 1849, and Rancourt both rowed for Cambridge, the latter coxed his crew to a five-length defeat in 1963. (Rancourt’s seven-seat rower, Donald Legget, became a coach and continues to coach Cambridge rowers to this day, including Mouelle.) Athens Olympian Bastien Ripoll stroked Oxford’s victorious men’s crew in 2006. Frenchwoman Myriam Goudet rowed in three consecutive Women’s Boat Races, her victories in 2016 and 2017 started the current eight-race Cambridge Women’s winning streak.

“It’s cool to be a part of this ‘club’ of French rowers. It’ll start the conversation if I bump into Myriam back home. I’ve never met Bastien, but it would be cool to meet him too. There are a few nationalities with big histories in The Boat Race - Germans, Americans, and Canadians - but this is definitely not the case with the French.”

The Boat Race 2024

A best seller is how Mouelle describes his second Boat Race. “On paper, purely on rowing CVs, they had the better crew. We went into it not knowing what was going to happen, but we’d worked super hard; harder than the 2023 season. More mileage. More volume. More intensity. More everything.”

Mouelle continues: “I had more self-confidence too. In 2023 my goal was to not muck up, in 2024 it was more like, ‘Let’s go!’, and that’s a big difference in mindset. During the warm-up we did a long piece and it felt so good; the power came so easily. I just thought, Okay it’s over! There’s no way we’re losing this race.”

Mouelle’s men leapt to an early lead which they extended beyond Hammersmith Bridge. It looked like a done deal until Cambridge stroke, Matt Edge, began to fade. The former lightweight fought to maintain his grip on both his blade and consciousness. It should have been a Boat Race-losing problem but luckily for the Light Blues, Oxford were unable to capitalise.

The Boat Race 2025

Last year, the Cambridge men cut through Oxford’s Olympian-laden Blue Boat to bag a comprehensive 16-second margin of victory. Compared with recent races it was a straightforward victory, however Mouelle’s own journey to the Blue Boat was anything but.

“Selection was super tough. I always knew it was going to be a close call. I fought super hard through the season. I was like, ‘I need to beat this guy’ which, of course, everyone was doing. You sort of get into this mentality, not delusional, but like, ‘I’m better than this guy, so I have to beat him,’ you refuse to think that you can’t do it.”

“We did this internal race, and he did really well. I had to admit, ‘Okay this guy is better than me’. I’d done everything I could to beat him, I’d trained super hard, no shortcuts or nothing, and he was still miles ahead. You just have to come to terms with it.”

Ultimately, Mouelle made his way back into the Blue Boat.

Internal competition for selection is no less fierce this year. “I could be in the spare pair, or I could be in the Blue Boat. That’s the range. It’s already so intense. There will be some really good athletes not making the boat. When you have a lot of guys in that position: you’re not going to worry about what Oxford are doing.”

But what of Oxford? The run up to The Boat Race 2026 feels different for Cambridge, from perennial underdogs to outright overdogs.

“It looks like Oxford are going to be the underdogs this year which to be honest is not a position I’m super comfortable with. As I was saying there are a lot of things you can muck up and one of them is thinking you are much better than the other crew.”

“If we win this year, it’s further validation. It shows that there is something special about what we are doing here at Cambridge.” •