13 April 2025
By Tim Koch
On Boat Race Day, Tim Koch finds that The Times newspaper wants to fix a race that ain’t broke.
We are all susceptible to flattery (particularly me) so when a journalist from The Times, a world famous 240-year-old “newspaper of record”, wanted to interview me as part of a piece about the Oxford – Cambridge Boat Race, I went a bit giggly and weak at the knees.
Of course, The Times in common with most of the British press including the other serious and in-depth “broadsheet” newspapers have long dispensed with have specialist rowing journalists on their staff, seemingly so they can put all their sports resources into reporting on a very small number of popular games and races, notably football. As print media declines, all newspapers require their remaining writers to be “expert” on many things.
The article by Homepage Reporter Laurence Sleator appeared in the online paywalled Times on Friday, 11 April and I will briefly summarise and comment on it below. I do not know if a print version of Sleator’s piece appeared on the 11th or if it will be in the printed Sunday Times on Boat Race Day, Sunday 13th.
Of more interest to me (and I think to all HTBS Types) was a link to an anonymous Times opinion piece that had passed me by when it was published on 19 March following the breaking news of the crew eligibility dispute. Its title was (spoiler alert), The Times View: The Boat Race should be contested by undergraduates. More on this later.
Sleator’s article was headlined:
ANALYSIS
The Boat Race 2025 is faster, older and more foreign than ever
In a year where would-be competitors have been barred due to their age and course of study, Oxford and Cambridge look to Olympians to give them an edge
In fact, of all the rowers in this year’s Blue Boats, the women’s crews have one Olympian each, the Oxford men have attracted three and the Cambridge men have a spare from the Paris Games. Six out of thirty-six.
The article began:
Controversy has raged for decades around questions of whether limits should be imposed on the age, course or experience level of those allowed to (sic) competes. But analysis by The Times shows that the men’s blue boat is now older, faster and more international than ever.
A lot of interesting statistical analysis followed illustrated by animated graphics by Data Journalist Matilda Davies (interesting at least for those of us particularly fascinated by the Boat Race).
The first graphic shows that the average speed of the men’s Blue Boat between 2015 and 2024 was 14.32 mph while the average in the 1920s was 12.61 mph. Interesting but meaningless. Show me any race that is not faster now than it was 100 years ago.
The next graphic showed the median age of the men’s blue boats since the pandemic: 22 in 2021; 24 in 2022; 22.5 in 2023; 23.5 in 2024; 24.5 in 2025. I am not a statistician, but I think such a person would class these five years’ worth of figures as “not statistically significant”.
Sleator then turns to that perennial why-oh-why favourite of those with no opinion on rowing for 364 days of the year – too many foreigners!
A chart covering 2015 to 2025 gives figures for “Number of Britons competing in the Boat Race”. As the number quoted for 2025 is six, I am guessing that this is in fact the number of Britons competing in just the men’s Blue Boats.Further, the bar graph has a little disclaimer underneath saying that it “does not include dual-nationality rowers who are part-British”. Of the thirty-six rowers in the men’s and women’s Blue Boats this year, twenty are British or part-British and the rest represent Australia, USA, Germany, France, South Africa, Italy, New Zealand and the Czech Republic. The Cambridge women’s stroke, Samy Morton, claims an Australian, Swedish and Mexican mix.
Sleator then brings in a big gun:
Tim Koch, a rowing historian and contributor to the website Hear the Boat Sing, where he has been writing for 15 years, says the race has featured a mixture of nationalities since the Australian William Robertson in the 1861 Oxford crew. “While Australians and New Zealanders have long been part of the race, for a long time Americans were the most high-profile foreigners, most notably when they seemed to lead the so-called ‘mutinies’ in the Oxford crews of 1987 and 1959,” Koch said. “In recent times, most years’ races seem to include the first member of a particular nationality to take part in what still remains a quintessentially British institution.”
I did say this but my explanation for this situation was not included. British universities, particularly the more prestigious ones, attract far greater numbers of foreign students than they did in the past. This is partly because the world is now a more mobile place and partly because universities are now run more like international businesses and are desperate to recruit lucrative foreign students – some of whom are rowers.
In 2014, Chris Dodd expressed similar thoughts on Rowing Voice:
From inception to this side of the Second World War, Blues came from English private schools or learned their craft at the universities, with a trickle of American and Commonwealth oarsmen. The Boat Race bred internationals, while today it is as much a repository for internationals, even Olympic champions. Two-way traffic now involves North America as much as Britain, and there is almost annual input from European countries and Down Under. Its demography reflects changing patterns in higher education as well as the sport of rowing.
My earlier comments on average speed also apply to the final statistics and comments under the title “Speeding up”:
Winning times in the Men’s Boat Race have decreased by two minutes on average since the early 1900s…
Koch said: “The standard of coaching is universally high on both sides, and because of pro coaches and equipment they are reaching maximum speed.”
The races are closer now than they have been in over a century. Since 2000, winners of the men’s race have taken the trophy by an average of just over three boat lengths, compared with more than seven lengths in the 1970s.
Returning to Sleator’s opening remarks:
Controversy has raged for decades around questions of whether limits should be imposed on the age, course or experience level of those allowed to (compete).
For decades? No. The longest running controversy is over “foreigners” in the crews and I have argued that this is nothing new and today just reflects the composition of the modern student body.
But analysis by The Times shows that the men’s blue boat is now older, faster and more international than ever.
Faster? Yes, this is the case for all speed based sports. This is not A Bad Thing.
Older? Not statistically significant. If true, would it be A Bad Thing?
More international? Arguable even though I am not sure if this means more non-Britons or more rowers who have represented their native country against foreign competition. Again, is this A Bad Thing? The rules have never specified nationalities, the race is for students of Oxford and Cambridge Universities with their long traditions of academic and sporting excellence – or even overachievement.
2025 is a post-Olympic year so more internationals would be expected, it is not necessarily part of a trend. Further, crews with more internationals however defined do not automatically defeat crews less blessed. The Boat Race is a unique event and crews faster on paper can be defeated by crews that somehow prove to be faster on water. I think that last year’s men’s race was an example of this, and I am predicting the same for it this year (though I will be carrying my egg wiping cloth should my face require it). With Boat Race crews, the sum is sometimes greater than the parts.
Ultimately, I am not entirely sure what Sleator’s argument is; he does not seem to have a conclusion.
As I mentioned at the beginning, Sleator’s article links to an anonymous opinion piece in the Times from 19 March headlined:
THE TIMES VIEW: The Boat Race should be contested by undergraduates
Both Oxford and Cambridge’s crews have been at the centre of controversy down the years — there’s a simple way to stop it.
Mmm… beware of simple solutions. Things have certainly changed since a Times opinion could make a government quake. The 270-word piece is mostly taken up with a summary of random past and present controversies. It ends:
Just because the practice of importing “ringers” specifically to compete in the Boat Race is long-established does not make it right. Over the years, both universities have been guilty of adopting such a win-at-all-costs mentality, thus diluting the Corinthian appeal of the duel on the Thames. Rather than each club packing its boats with what are, in effect, professional sportsmen and women, a return to the days of true amateur undergraduates battling for glory alone would be welcome.
The Times View states three things as facts that are simply not:
1) That there is a practice of importing “ringers” specifically to compete in the Boat Race.
Although the universities are happy to use the Boat Race as a marketing tool when selling themselves abroad, OUBC and CUBC are not part of their universities governing bodies – they are student run sports clubs. The boat clubs have no influence on who is admitted to study at their universities. If the crews are in fact “too white” or “too posh” or “too foreign”, that is down to those in charge of university admissions and not student sporting clubs. The coaches can only pick from a student body that they do not choose and they select looking at ergo scores, boat moving skills and fitness levels – not pigmentation, social status or nationality.
2) That the Corinthian appeal of the duel on the Thames has been diluted.
3) The crews are “packed” with what are, in effect, professional sportsmen and women.
Professionals are full-time and are paid. Student athletes, whatever their previous sporting history, get no pecuniary rewards and train part-time with no let off from their studies. They are only “professional” in the sense of their dedication and sacrifice.
Often, what were once controversies quickly turn into forgotten squabbles. In 1976, there were many now little remembered protests over the introduction of commercial sponsorship and the so-called death of the Corinthian Spirit. Sponsorship turned out to be the best thing that ever happened to the race, allowing full-time professional coaches to replace random Old Blues and turn what was becoming a joke race (often a procession after Hammersmith) into a world class event.
Some years ago, Rachel Quarrell and Chris Dodd addressed the undergraduate question in Rowing Voice. They found that both Oxford and Cambridge had more than doubled in size since the 1960s, but the increase in numbers consisted almost entirely of female students and research programmes for higher degrees. As gender equality advanced, the numbers of male undergraduates from which to draw oarsmen hardly increased.
The Times wants a return to some alleged “Golden Age”, never a good or an achievable idea. Restricting the Boat Race to undergraduates would bias it even more to those from traditional rowing schools, institutions that are almost all fee paying and disproportionately boys only, as these would then be the majority of those who arrive at university having previously rowed to a good standard.
Although great efforts are being made to change it, it must be admitted that, for practical and historical reasons, rowing in the UK and many other countries is a very inaccessible sport. While universities, their boat clubs, their college clubs, open rowing clubs, governing bodies and charities are currently attempting to open rowing up, it is a fact that Boat Race crews are disproportionately from fee paying or restricted entry schools. The Times has come up with an idea that will reverse or stop any such gains that have been made or could be made to change this. As a bonus, you will get slower, less interesting races with women’s rowing particularly negatively affected.
In 2018, I produced a robust rebuttal of a remarkably ill-informed and bigoted piece by the associate editor of another newspaper that should know better, the (online only) Independent, titled, “The Boat Race? No thanks. I can think of better things to do than watch a bunch of poshos rowing higher up the social hierarchy”. Seven years on, The Times could have titled its opinion piece, The Boat Race? Let’s increase the number of poshos!