Two crews of eight rowing four miles down the Thames. The premise of the Boat Race, contested annually – and fiercely – by eternal rivals Oxford and Cambridge, is very simple. But the race has assumed not just a prized place in the British sporting calendar, but also a place in the national consciousness, like Wimbledon or the Grand National.
Also like the Grand National, the Boat Race is not without its controversies. This year’s race has been dominated by an ugly row over selection that has prevented three PGCE students at Cambridge from taking part, while the spectre of water pollution and sewage in the Thames has once again reared its head. The Boat Race Company – the neutral body which runs the race – has opted for a policy of sweeping both issues under the carpet.
But a long-term issue the Boat Race must grapple with is over its image. From its pleasant milieu in leafy southwest London, to the near 200-year history of the men’s race, the Boat Race is steeped in tradition. But the flip side of that is a public perception of an elitist and backward-looking institution, populated by brigades of privately educated, privileged students.
This year, though, the Boat Race is looking both forward and back: 2025 marks 10 years of the women’s edition being contested on the same Championship Course as the men, while receiving the same billing and TV coverage by the BBC.
Equality has been a long time coming: the first women’s Boat Race took place in 1927, the year before women in the UK were finally granted full suffrage. Even that was far from a fair fight: it was more of a points race, with the rowers judged on style rather than speed.
The Boat Race has continued ever since that edition, in different forms and on different courses, before the push to bring it into the modern era. Cambridge have the edge over their Dark Blue counterparts in both races but particularly in the women’s, winning 48 to Oxford’s 30, and have the chance to equal their eight-race winning run from the 1990s on Sunday.
The storied history of the race has echoed down the generations: Oxford women’s president, Annie Anezakis, a two-time returning Blue, said: “Our team want to do it for each other and for the women that have come before us.”
Siobhan Cassidy, chair of the Boat Race Company, said: “Those kinds of numbers are really impressive for women’s rowing. To have been going for almost 100 years of the women’s boat race, is really exciting. We’re moving forward to an amazing summer of sport, particularly in London with all the women’s sport events that are taking place right up until the autumn with the rugby [World Cup]. So it’s a special thing, and it’s something we should be really proud of.”
Now, though, the selection row has threatened to undo some of that progress. Preventing PGCE students – those working towards teacher training qualifications – from taking part is likely to disproportionately affect women, with statistics showing that 68 per cent of postgraduate students on such courses are female.
Former Olympic silver medallist Cath Bishop even alleged that the two female students who were banned, Molly Foxell and Kate Crowley, have been “collateral damage”, with Oxford focused on removing the threat posed by Cambridge’s former under-23 men’s world champion Matt Heywood.
This year, the Boat Race is emphasising its female contingent, with rowers Heidi Long and Claire Collins getting top billing on the cover of the race programme. The pair have raced parallel careers, meeting at least 15 times through the junior, under-23, collegiate and senior ranks.
Their most recent face-off was in the women’s eight at the Paris Olympics last year, when Long won bronze for Team GB and Collins’s US team were fifth. Now the pair are on opposite crews once more, with Long stroking for Oxford and Collins in the six seat for Cambridge.
“To be honest, this is the event that I feel like people care about the most that I've been a part of,” Collins says. “There’s a lot of tradition and history, and amazing people that have come here and raced this race.
“It’s really cool that it’s the 10-year anniversary for the women. There’s really nothing like it: it’s amazing to see people row out here every day from the clubs and such history along the Embankment. There are maybe small pockets of it in the US but I wouldn’t say that the roots are quite as deep in terms of an event like this.”
Both Long and Collins are making their debuts in the Boat Race, but Collins’s teammate Carys Earl is an old sweat, with this her third year in the Cambridge boat.
Earl grew up in Oxford, watching the college teams rowing on the Isis and Cherwell rivers, but never imagined she would be in their position. The 22-year-old went to a state school and had never rowed before her first term at Cambridge, but after a trial session for novices in Fresher’s Week, she was hooked.
“From the outset it might look like it’s an elitist and highly selective process, but anyone can rock up on day one, with any experience,” she says. “When I first got in a boat three years ago I could barely put my blade in the water, I had no idea what I was doing. But Paddy [Ryan], our coach, clearly saw something in me. I’m a medic so I’m here for six years, so he was like, maybe worth investing in that one!
“Every step of the way I’ve had people supporting me, and that’s what really kept me going, wanting to come back every year. Yes, I don’t have the same level of experience as people who have managed to do it all the way through juniors, but I don’t think that’s necessarily held me back. I’ve been given exactly the same opportunities. I think that’s really special about Cambridge, they don’t discriminate about ‘oh, you didn’t row when you were 14’: it’s what you can do on the day.”
Earl nearly didn’t even apply to Cambridge, until one of her teachers, who had been in the Light Blues’ lightweight boat herself, convinced her otherwise. The experience has opened up an entirely new world for Earl.
“There is that idea about it that it’s unattainable, but for me it just took that one teacher to be like, you should give it a go,” she says.
Cassidy combats the accusations of the Boat Race operating in rarefied air by pointing out the level playing field of college rowing. “Both Oxford and Cambridge have amazing learn to row centres through all the colleges, there are thousands of young people learning to row every year,” she says. “I think that’s quite inspiring for people getting to watch it.
“We’re in a really privileged position to shine a light on an amazing sport. It’s brought these young people here to race who have got experience of national teams in the States or in the British team, and they still want to come and do it, because it’s a bucket list event. That’s something to be really proud of. You can criticise it, but also, you can see it’s a great opportunity.”
With the Boat Race marking 10 years of full parity between the men’s and women’s races it’s evident that even this most traditional of institutions is modernising. But work still needs to be done to bring its public perception up to speed as it toes the line between respecting its time-honoured traditions and moving with the times. As Earl says, “You might want it to be old and traditional but at the same time, sport is always evolving.”
