On December 18th during the vac, the Oxford University Boat Club took to the Tideway for their one dress rehearsal before the Boat Race (newly sponsored and now the ‘Chanel J12 Boat Race’). It offers rowers who aren’t baptised in the flames of the contest the opportunity to race the course against competitive (albeit internal) opposition. While Oxford sees many Olympic rowers come and go, the experience on the choppier Thames waters is vital for a winning team. With just three months to go until the Boat Race this year, this trial race helps both the coaches and the rowers understand what to work on for the final quarter of the cycle.
Both the men’s and women’s side of the club held two races, with lightweight and openweighted crews battling it out for a seat on the 13th of April. The women’s side was somewhat one-sided, as the ‘Moto Moto’ crew led by Women’s President Annie Anezakis steamed to an eight length victory over ‘King Julien’ in the openweighted boats, while the women’s lightweight was slightly less emphatic (but still convincing) as ‘Maurice’ ended up beating ‘Gloria’ by four and a half lengths. Eagle-eyed readers will note that the 2005 film Madagascar offered inspiration for their boat names. A fun tradition of these trial races is the external references used for names. Oxford women went for Madagascar across the board, while the Oxford men’s openweight chose Aardman’s Wallace and Gromit.
Cambridge women named their crews after A. A. Milne’s Winnie the Pooh; and the Cambridge lightweight men went for ‘Thunder’ and ‘Lightning’ in homage to the great speedster Lightning McQueen. It was only Cambridge’s openweight men who thought they were too cool to represent their childhoods and went for the Greek mythological creatures ‘Scylla’ and ‘Charybdis’ that appear in Book XII of Homer’s Odyssey. Ironically, Cambridge will probably be seeing an eight-headed [rowing] monster devour them on April 13th, and will be left wishing they opted for the whirlpool with teeth.
The men’s openweight race was the most hotly-contested race of the day, as ‘Wallace’ and ‘Gromit’ duked it out exchanging power for discipline to see ‘Gromit’ walk out eventual winners by two lengths. ‘Wallace’ showed aggression both at the start and approaching Hammersmith Bridge all the way to Chiswick Pier, but difficult conditions put a wrench in their plans, and ‘Gromit’ rowed through with composure to take what would eventually be a winning margin.
The two crews on paper were very well-matched, with an impressive engine in ‘Wallace’ consisting of 2024 Olympian Nicholas Kohl, 2023 OUBC President Tass Von Mueller and James Doran, who placed 3rd in the GB trials in April 2024. In the ‘Gromit’ boat, Olympic Bronze medallist Nick Rusher was setting the tone at stroke, backed up by a reliable crew with Boat Race experience including Tom Sharrock who rowed in the Blue Boat in 2023, and in Isis in 2024 and Saxon Stacey who did the opposite, rowing for Isis in 2023 and the Blue Boat in 2024.
Saxon kindly answered some of Cherwell’s questions about the day and gave us an insight into what was going on behind the scenes. “The atmosphere was calm. Calmer than last year,” he said, as despite the potential selection stakes, crews seemed to focus more on their own rhythms, rather than race tactics (the latter of which can make you think too much about what the other crew is going to do). Less emphasis was certainly placed on selection this year as well, as the “coaches have put less emphasis on telemetry” (ergs don’t float) and so rowers could concentrate more on moving together, rather than trying to put out as much wattage as possible.
After falling to Cambridge last year, Cherwell asked Saxon if the squad feels like it has a chip on its shoulder this year, but he responded that it feels more like ushering in a new era, and that there is a general feeling of excitement around the camp instead. Despite still being an undergrad (no gap year either), Saxon has become one of the more experienced OUBC members, having taken to the Tideway twice in his two years at Oxford for both Isis and the Blue boat at the Boat Race. When asked about what responsibilities he feels despite his age, he mentioned that while the Olympians lead the charge technically and athletically, his job is to “help the new guys adjust to the peculiarities of Oxford rowing and to help the coaches avoid making the same mistakes we’ve made before” although apparently this often ends up coming out as “old biased stories”.
Saxon was placed in the 7 seat for the trial race. For those unfamiliar, the stroke seat sets the rhythm of a boat, seated right in front of the cox. The 7 seat behind them is not only following the stroke’s rhythm, but must match it perfectly so that both sides of the boat are rowing evenly. It’s a huge responsibility and is often reserved for reliable and consistent rowers who demonstrate good technique, discipline and determination to stay in time. After asking what that meant to him, knowing the confidence the coaches had in his abilities, he brushed it off, saying: “I like it because there’s more focus on rhythm than in some other seats. To the 3 seat, for example, people often go, ‘you’re the big guy, you’re just there to pull hard’ [but] people don’t really say that to the 7 seat, so I feel like I can focus on rowing a long and consistent stroke with fewer distractions.”
Finally, Cherwell asked about what it took to hold off ‘Wallace’ in its aggression in order to come through victorious. Saxon highlighted the importance of discipline, over the tropes of ‘grittiness’ or ‘toughness’. “This is a level of sport where you can’t assume that the other crew will be any less gritty than you are. It can detract from the rhythmic and technical focus because people feel that the only way they’re going to win is by going deeper than the next man, which often leads to solo efforts and the crew falling apart,’ he rightly points out. Instead, he looked to his stroke as a source of support at the business end of the race: “Personally I found confidence in Nick’s rhythm – I know how determined he is as an athlete and how technically skilled, and I thought ‘he’s not going to let us lose, so I won’t either’. I knew that all I had to do was stay in his rhythm and we’d be fine.”
