RUSSIAN tennis player Anachronism will make her seasonal appearance in the sports pages this week. Yes, it is the Boat Race and for the 148th time officials have rigged the draw to ensure an Oxford-Cambridge final on the Thames. “It’s a scandal,” said spokesman Vic Inhaler, vowing to clear his nose.
It is easy to poke fun at the Boat Race - not so bloody easy to row in it. We are used to emotive scenes of shattered dreams. Rugby players on their haunches, picking at the turf. That look of despair on an athlete - usually Paula Radcliffe - as some Eastern European, with thighs the size of Gateshead, pips her on the line.
But for the most brutal image of utter sporting desolation you had to be on the towpath last year. Losing Oxford president Dan Snow, eyes double-glazed, mind as scrambled as a Hannibal Lecter victim. Snow is imbued with gallons of Corinthian spirit and all the other anachronisms attributed to one of the last bastions of noble amateur endeavour. But tell him or any other Blue that it is not the winning, but the taking part, and you will experience just how smelly T S Eliot’s Strong Brown God is at this time of the year. Treat the twin imposters just the same? Rollocks.
Last year steering problems led to a clash within 30 seconds of the start and Cambridge bowman Colin Swainson caught a crab. Advantage Oxford, but a re-start was ordered for the first time in history and Cambridge went on to win the Aberdeen Asset Management Trophy.
Whether the decision was fair, depends on the hue of your blue, but in an age where nasal sprays can destroy a career, it seems strange you can contract a sexually transmitted disease and not be disqualified. Last year’s controversy still rankles. Oxford’s Trial Eights were called Bitter and Twisted.
The Boat Race is rowed over 4.5 miles from Putney to Mortlake. That is three times the distance Sir Steve Redgrave and pals covered for victory in the Sydney Olympics. The oarsmen have trained six hours a day, six days a week for six months. Don’t you wish Lee Bowyer and his footballing ilk could be put through that ordeal? Well, the two hours before the paramedics arrived anyway.
Boat Race oarsmen are ordinary men missing a few lectures to touch extraordinary peaks - just for one day. There is extraordinary and then there is Dan Perkins, an American at Oxford. By rights Perkins should not be on earth, let alone water. A tumour the size of a golf ball on his brain was meant to kill him and he has twice conquered cancer. Perkins may train with the fear of Boat Race failure, but he lives with the shadow of cancer, “a form of personal terrorism”, recurring. If the river God has a conscience it must be Oxford, though Cambridge will be remembering the late Harry Mahon, their great coach during their period of domination in the 90s, who died last year from cancer.
The Boat Race is awash with relevant and trivial statistics. Apparently more alumni from Eton have rowed in the Boat Race than any other school, with Oxford bowman Andrew Dunn flying the Eton flag this year and up against his cousin, Rick Dunn, in the Cambridge boat. Doubtless, after hunting, Labour’s class warriors will turn their prejudices on rowing - toffs catching crabs.
As a sport there are few crueller.
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