Boat Race embroiled in 'slimy' row over trainee teachers

Oxford has been accused of behaving in a "slimy way" in the run-up to next month's Boat Race with Cambridge.

Four Cambridge rowers have been blocked from competing in the annual showdown, in what their team has described as a "desperate ploy" from their rowing rivals. The dispute "is being taken so seriously that the vice-chancellors of both universities are now said to be considering intervening", The Guardian said.

'A new low'

The "age-old rivalry" between the two university rowing teams took a "new turn" after the race organisers banned postgraduate teaching students from competing this year, said the Daily Mail. With only weeks until the big day, the ban prevents three Cambridge rowers – including former double world champion Matt Heywood – from taking part.

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Oxford University – which hasn't won the women's Boat Race for six years, and has only won it once in that time with the men's team – successfully argued that the PGCE teacher training qualification does not meet the degree-level eligibility criteria because "it is a diploma and that is not a degree". Cambridge challenged the ruling but, after an initial reversal, the challenge was dismissed.

The ruling is "an insult to teachers everywhere" and a "desperate ploy" from Oxford to "gain an upper hand" in "the most slimy way", former Cambridge Blue and Olympic champion Imogen Grant said on Instagram. Her fellow Cambridge graduate, Olympic silver medallist Cath Bishop, described the move as "utter madness", a "crying shame" and a "new low" in relations between Oxford and Cambridge boat clubs.

The "composition of both crews has often been contested", said The Guardian, particularly when it's felt one boat club or other is "gaming the system by recruiting elite athletes to study easy degrees".

Also barred from the race – in a separate eligibility ruling – is Cambridge's Olympic champion Tom Ford. He "fell foul of rules" that exclude anyone who "first began a degree more than 12 years earlier", said The Spectator. This rule was introduced after double Olympic champion James Cracknell rowed for Cambridge in 2019 at the age of 46.

'Mutiny' in the crew

The Boat Race has also had its controversies on the water. In 1877, a 'dead heat' was declared, amid rumours that the finish judge, "Honest" John Phelps, had fallen asleep. "The truth is more interesting", said The Telegraph: without aligned finish posts, Phelps was "unable to tell for sure" who had won the closely fought race, so he simply "declared a draw".

Just over a century later, in 1987, a thunderstorm turned the Putney to Mortlake course into a "churning mass of wind and waves", said Cambridgeshire Live. The terrible conditions reflected the turmoil in the run-up to the event: the Oxford team was "rocked" by "mutiny" at their coach's regime, and five rowers quit weeks before the big day. The eventual, unfancied Oxford line-up lucked out in getting the more sheltered side of the river to row on, and their triumph over a water-soaked Cambridge was immortalised in the film "True Blue".

In 2001, umpire Rupert Obholzer ordered the race to be stopped and restarted for the first time in its history, as the two crews clashed oars amid heavy rain. Ten years earlier, said The Independent, Obholzer himself had "raised an eyebrow or three" when, as a member of Oxford's victorious crew, he was seen "offering a middle finger to the vanquished Cambridge" boat.