1 April 2025
By Tim Koch & Mel Brown
Mel Brown and Tim Koch continue to respectively produce pictures and prose. Pictures © Mel Brown Studios.
To reiterate for those who have not been paying attention:
Boat Race Fixtures are races in which top British and foreign crews race potential Oxford and Cambridge men’s and women’s Blue, reserve and lightweight crews over parts of the Putney to Mortlake course as part of the Oxbridge crews’ Boat Race Day preparations.
Since the end of January, there have been at least eight days when multiple fixture races have taken place, but each boat club has one day which is designated Media Fixture Day when a press launch follows their potential or chosen Blue boats and a livestream with commentary is broadcast. The Cambridge Media Fixtures were on 2 March and the Oxford Media Fixtures, reported on here, were on 28 March.
Brief race reports appear on theboatrace.org and they are reproduced here in bold italics.
The Oxford Women took on Leander in three races: the start to Hammersmith Bridge; Hammersmith Bridge to the Bandstand; the Bandstand to the finish. There was a reasonable amount of recovery time between races.
Leander sent a strong women’s crew, star-studded with development GB athletes and established age-group internationals. Oxford were there to test against one of the best women’s eights in the country, which had Olympic champion Hannah Scott sat at four.
Oxford’s Blue Boat, announced at Battersea Power Station last week, has Olympian Heidi Long and GB international Kyra Delray as the stern pair, backed up by President Annie Anezakis at six.
The first race, with Oxford on the Surrey side (left as viewed here), saw Leander show their superior base pace to beat the Dark Blues to Hammersmith Bridge by about a length and a quarter.
The second race, around the top of the tight Hammersmith bend to the bandstand, saw a similar margin of victory.
The (third and) final race saw the crews come together to fight for the stream on the Championship Course round the final Barnes bend… The Oxford crew stayed on Surrey, giving them the disadvantage on the outside of the bend, but they reduced the margin to about a length and a foot.
Oxford can perhaps find some solace in that, when Cambridge took on a Leander crew in two races over the course on 2 March, they too lost – first by two lengths and then by one-and-a-half lengths (admittedly, five days later Cambridge were only nine seconds behind Leander when racing over the full course in the Women’s Head of the River Race).
Writing on theboatrace.org, Tom Ransley posted a piece titled The Boat Race Crews Analysed. He holds that the Oxford Men’s Blue Boat has the potential to be one of their all-time quickest.
Ransley notes:
For Oxford this will be their first Boat Race in almost three decades without the legendary coach Sean Bowden. Bowden’s successor, Mark Fangen-Hall, has inherited an enviable array of top-quality oarsmen from which to select.
Oxford’s stern three are especially strong. Italy’s Niko Kohl, who finished fourth in the men’s four at the Paris Olympics, is set to stroke. He will be supported by USA Olympic medallist Nick Rusher, and their president, Tom Mackintosh, the Tokyo men’s eight Olympic champion, who will sit at six. The middle pair are returning Blues: Great Britain’s James Doran, and Germany’s seven-time national champion, Tassilo von Mueller…
The Oxford Men were racing London Rowing Club – who produced the sixth place crew at the recent Head of the River Race. The race format was unusual for a fixture race, four times four minutes racing and then one minute light – so no big winning/losing margins were expected. The result of this was that Oxford had the bend advantage in races one and four, London in races two and three.
The race report on theboatrace.org:
In a series of shorter races with only a brief segment of light rowing in between, it was a testing day for the men in Dark Blue.
The water had become much choppier by the time the men raced and although being led slightly off the start, Oxford on Middlesex steadily rowed through London RC by the end of the first race. Umpire Sarah Winckless was kept very busy with coxes jostling for position in the choppy and breezy conditions.
Throughout the interval pieces, OUBC took each of them by varying margins, but each race was hard-fought with Oxford probably demonstrating better speed and longevity as the racing went on. In the final piece… Oxford crossed the finish line two lengths ahead.
Perhaps we can get a very tenuous men’s Oxford – Cambridge comparison from the Head of the River results. On 22 March, the London Rowing Club A Crew finished one place above the Cambridge Reserve Crew (minus stroke Matt Edge). LRC was 6th with a time of 17.37.5 and Goldie was 7th with a time of 17.44.8.
So, Cambridge Reserves can get to within seven seconds of London’s best over the full course (though not racing side-by-side). We assume that the CUBC Blue Boat is faster. For the fixture on the 29th we saw that Oxford’s Blue Boat can beat London in shorter side-by-side pieces. I do not know how many in the LRC boat were from their Head crew but Tom Ford, recently declared ineligible to row for Cambridge, was at stroke – in Light Blue kit!
The only conclusion that I can draw from all this is that it should be a great men’s race on 13 April.
The Oxford Media Fixtures can be viewed on demand here.