The Boat Race
The Boat Race is an annual set of rowing races between the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Oxford University Boat Club, traditionally rowed between open-weight eights on the River Thames in London, England. It is also known as the University Boat Race and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
This article is about the race between Oxford and Cambridge universities. For other uses, see Boat race (disambiguation). For the most recent Boat Race, see The Boat Race 2024.
The men's race was first held in 1829 and has been held annually since 1856, except during the First and Second World Wars (although unofficial races were conducted) and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020. The first women's event was held in 1927, and the Women's Boat Race has been an annual event since 1964. Since 2015, the women's race has taken place on the same day and course, and since 2018 the combined event of the two races has been referred to as "The Boat Race".
The Championship Course has hosted the vast majority of the races. Covering a 4.2-mile (6.8 km) stretch of the Thames in West London, from Putney to Mortlake, it is over three times the distance of an Olympic race. Members of both crews are traditionally known as blues and each boat as a "Blue Boat", with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford in dark blue. As of the 2024 race, Cambridge has won the men's race 87 times to Oxford's 81 times, with one dead heat, and has led Oxford in cumulative wins since 1930. In the women's race, Cambridge has won the race 47 times to Oxford's 30 times, and has led Oxford in cumulative wins since 1966. A reserve boat race has been held since 1965 for the men and since 1966 for the women.
In most years over 250,000 people watch the race from the banks of the river. In 2009, a record 270,000 people watched the race live.[13] The race is broadcast internationally on television;[14] in 2014, 15 million people watched the race on television.[15]
Media coverage[edit]
The race first appeared in a short film of the 1895 race entitled The Oxford and Cambridge University Boat Race, directed and produced by Birt Acres. Consisting of a single shot of around a minute, it was the first film to be commercially screened in the UK outside London.[74] The event is now a British national institution, and is televised live each year. The women's race has received television coverage and grown in popularity since 2015, attracting a television audience of 4.8 million viewers that year.[75][76][77] BBC Television first covered the men's race in 1938, the BBC having covered it on radio since 1927. For the 2005 to 2009 races, the BBC lost the television rights to ITV, after 66 years, but it returned to the corporation in 2010.[78] Ethnographer Mark de Rond described the training, selection, and victory of the 2007 Cambridge crew in The Last Amateurs: To Hell and Back with the Cambridge Boat Race Crew.[79]
Other boat races involving Oxford and Cambridge[edit]
Although the Boat Race crews are the best-known, the universities both field reserve crews. The reserves race takes place on the same day as the main race. The Oxford men's reserve crew is called Isis (after the Isis, a section of the River Thames which passes through Oxford), and the Cambridge reserve men's crew is called Goldie (the name comes from rower and Boat Club president John Goldie, 1849–1896, after whom the Goldie Boathouse is named). The women's reserve crews are Osiris (Oxford) and Blondie (Cambridge).[95] A veterans' boat race, usually held on a weekday before the main Boat Race, takes place on the Thames between Putney and Hammersmith.[96]
The two universities also field lightweight men's and women's crews. These squads race each other in eights as part of the Lightweight Boat Races. The first men's race took place in 1975, being joined by a women's race in 1984. Both races are currently held on the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) Championship Course from Putney to Mortlake, although they previously formed part of the Henley Boat Races, along with various other rowing races between the two universities including the openweight women's Boat Race until 2015. Competitors in the event have gone on to compete at international and Olympic levels, as well as represent their universities at openweight level.[97][98][99][100] For the men's race the average weight of the crew must be 70 kg (154.3 lb / 11 st 0.3 lb), with no rower weighing over 72.5 kg (159.8 lb / 11 st 5.8 lb). For the women's race no rower can exceed 59 kg (130.0 lb / 9 st 4 lb). At Oxford, both the men's and women's lightweight boats are awarded a full blue. At Cambridge the women's boat is awarded a full blue, whereas the men's boat receives a half-blue.
In popular culture[edit]
Boat race became such a popular phrase that it was incorporated into Cockney rhyming slang, for "face".[101]
In the stories of P. G. Wodehouse, several characters allude to Boat Race night as a time of riotous celebration (presumably after the victory of the character's alma mater). This frequently sees the participants in trouble with the authorities. In Piccadilly Jim, it is mentioned that Lord Datchett was thrown out of the Empire Music Hall every year on Boat Race night while he was an undergraduate.[102] Bertie Wooster mentions he is "rather apt to let myself go a bit" on Boat Race night[103] and several times describes being fined five pounds at "Bosher Street" (possibly a reference to Bow Street Magistrates' Court) for stealing a policeman's helmet one year; the beginning of the first episode of the television series Jeeves and Wooster shows his court appearance on this occasion.[104] In the short story Jeeves and the Chump Cyril, he describes having to repeatedly bail out of jail a friend who is arrested every year on Boat Race night.[105]
In Missee Lee by Arthur Ransome (one of the Swallows and Amazons series of children's books) Captain Flint (who had dropped out of Oxford) tells Missee Lee he was in gaol once on Boat-race night. High spirits. A fancy for policemen's helmets. When Missee Lee says Camblidge won and evellybody happy he replies Not that year, ma'am. We were the happy ones that year.[106] In the Jennings books by Anthony Buckeridge the protagonist's teacher Mr Wilkins is a former Cambridge rowing blue.[107]
The 1969 film The Magic Christian features the Boat Race, as Sir Guy makes use of the Oxford crew in one of his elaborate pranks.[108]
Actor and comedian Matt Berry wrote and narrated an irreverent, alternative history of the Boat Race for the BBC in 2015.[109]
Men's race
Women's race