Issue 97 - April 1997

Power and poise

A few years ago Cambridge began to spend the penultimate week before the Boat Race in Nottingham, and it was good. This year Oxford abandoned Putney for Amsterdam because of a famine in people willing to race them. On the Amstel they won the two-day Heineken Roei-vierkamp, a series of 250m and 750m sprints and 2500m and 5000m time trials on the border of the red light district. They were first in all but the 750m sprint, in which they were pipped by the French national squad containing six Olympic medal winners.

Cambridge's last serious encounter before the 143rd Boat Race - and 11th Beefeater Trophy - was with Imperial College, six oarsmen and a cox from their 1996 winning Henley Grand winners supplemented by an Olympian and an under-23 international. They were well matched, and Cambridge won the first piece from the Boat Race start to Chiswick Eyot. Imperial whipped off in the second piece from the Eyot to the Finish, but Cambridge hit their stride quickly and drew level after the first minute, when stroke James Ball caught a whopping crab which flattened him in the boat. The subsequent awry steering and clashing of blades damaged an Imperial rigger and ended the contest just as Cambridge's mettle was about to be tested on the outside of the Mortlake bend.

© Copyright Christopher Dodd, 1997.