Through all of the traditions of the Boat Race season, from the President’s Challenge to the fixture season and the crew announcements, the spirits of the oldest fixture in university sport have risen towards its 170th edition. This Wednesday, the racing will finally commence as crews representing Oxford and Cambridge strike out as the spare pairs showdown across the first mile of The Boat Race course.
On the women’s side, Oxford are not fielding any crews, so the opening race of the Tideway week will be between the open and lightweight Cambridge crews as CUBC President Lucy Havard (a former Blondie rower) will join with Scottish junior international Pheobe Pryce to take on the lightweight duo of Annabelle Moger-Taylor and Margot Faguet.
For the men, we have a full complement of entries from both dark and light blue camps.
From Cambridge, it’s an all-American affair as postgraduate Ben Rutherford and Sean Hayes make up the combination. Rutherford, a product of Gonzaga Prep in Washington, spent some time in Penn’s first Varsity eight during his undergraduate years. Hayes was a Harvard lightweight after rowing for the legendary Greenwich Crew junior squad and has won with Goldie in the last two Boat Race campaigns. This seasoned duo will want to do anything to start the Cambridge campaign in winning form.
From Oxford, the crew is Will Randell and Hamish Rimmer. Randell is an ex-novice who started rowing at St Edmund Hall just 18 months ago. On the other hand, Rimmer is far more accomplished in the sport, starting at Radley at the age of 13, having raced in the final of The Princess Elizabeth Challenge Cup as a junior. He also sat in the bow-seat of the narrowly defeated Isis crew last year. Together, they raced the Tideway course during trial eights, sitting in the two and three seats of the defeated ‘Wallace’ crew. With experience racing head-to-head on a difficult day on the Tideway, they will be wanting to end with a different result in the likely favourable conditions on Wednesday.
With all athletes having focused on racing in eights over a long distance, it will be interesting to see how they react to racing over less than two kilometres in small boats. Cheered on from the bank by their entire clubs, I would expect things to stay close, but ultimately, the vastly experienced Cambridge crew is my pick to come out on top.
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