Row Swiftly: 160th Annual Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race

Wonderful sport, where the unpredictable can and does happen. Even when the Oxford–Cambridge crews are pulling well together at the 160th annual boat race with a lot of tenured oarsmen who have trained like hell to be on the water on race day–the oar can occasionally get lodged in the water causing the boat to lose momentum. Having rowed as a teenager for Ridley College, victorious at the Canadian Schoolboy in our men's eight, I watched another Ridley men's boat (Ras's crew) who were favorites to win get a boat stopping crab and the coxswain simply brought the boat in. Oh, so sad for that crew for having one full year of training end that way. And yesterday, Cambridge two seat enmeshed his oar with the Oxford seven seat and pulled a crab that nearly saw him out of the boat.

 In my twenties, when our University of Toronto lightweight men's eight were racing the Canadian National Team lightweight men's eight at a precursor regatta to the Royal Canadian Henley, our adversaries boat came to a crashing halt with a similar crab. My guess was our boat was very close and it psychologically freaked them out that the University Of Toronto hacks were not going away after 1500 meters and our 500 meters finish was still there on full throttle. Most of us were on that Canadian National team boat next year winning silver at the World's. However, how did we resolve that situation then? Well, our coach Paul Peene who always had us row in both lightweight 8 and heavyweight 8 events sent us back to the starting gates with the National team boat and we did a re-row. As I recall, it was our third 2000 meters race of the day. Of course, with all that training we won Royal Canadian Henley that year with open water defeating everything from USA, Mexico and globe. Maybe this Oxford-Cambridge boat race should have done a re-row. That's what sportsmanship is about sometimes. Ha!

This morning, I had a wonderful 30 minute pull on the ergometer with a former University of London stroke next to me. He had won the Henley Royal on Thames three times which is totally awesome. Wonderful to chat and make some new friends. So much easier with rowers. Thinking of buying a shell for my wife, son and I. Glad some good rowing is happening in the Bay Area with Mike Teti at Berkeley, and Craig Amerkhanian at Stanford–but thinking of sending my son who is interested in crew to either Ridley College, Upper Canada College or Brentwood College once he is eleven.