Rowing: An epic rhapsody in Dark Blue

The silent embrace between the two cousins on the shore below Chiswick Bridge said it all. No one deserved to lose the 148th Boat Race and there was a tacit acknowledgement of that fact in the giant bearhug between Andrew Dunn, the Oxford bowman, and the Cambridge stroke, Rick Dunn, as Oxford began an exuberant celebration of the closest margin of victory in 50 years, only their second win in the last decade. Usually, contact between victors and losers is kept to a minimum. It is as much part of the ritual as the pre-race challenge and the toss. But this was important; this was family.

"I felt really bad for him," said Andrew Dunn of his cousin. "I know how you feel when you lose because I've been there. There's nothing to say and there was no need to say anything. You both know."

For what must have seemed like a lifetime their destinies had been linked in a desperate tango. A mere race, dismissed by so many as an inevitable procession, invited comparison with the most gripping sporting theatre. Passion, drama, waves of emotion sweeping down the river from Putney to Mortlake, driving the crews on to even greater effort. At the end, the merest snap of a finger separating the two crews. The bare timings say that Cambridge led at every significant mile post, except for the finish when Oxford, who had been forced to row round the outside of the final bend, breaking the indomitable Light Blue spirit so suddenly that the Cambridge No. 4, Sebastian Mayer, was left rocking backward and forward, his oar as useless as a matchstick.

No one blamed the German international for Cambridge's loss. "I don't want him to feel bad," said Robin Williams, the Cambridge coach whose gaunt face told the story of the race. But Mayer's prostrate, unmoving figure in the defeated crew separated winners from losers.

"We've had a very precious spirit from the very first time we came together as a crew," said Andrew Dunn. "It comes from the camaraderie of having been through such intense physical suffering over the past six or seven months.

"This has been the best, the fastest and the most fun crew I've ever rowed in. We just had this belief all the way through, a bloody-minded stubbornness, I suppose, that we could do it. I mean, you come to the last bend and you either fold and everyone applauds you for an epic race but you lose, or you can shut your eyes, grit your teeth and put the pedal to the metal."

It was the sort of do-or-die spirit that Derek Clarke and Sean Bowden had noticed in Robin Bourne-Taylor, the Oxford No. 7, and not one of rowing's great stylists. "He's been criticised for not having the most perfect, clinical bladework, but he's not there for his bladework. He's there because back last summer, cycling in the Alps, we climbed l'Alpe d'Huez, one of the toughest climbs on the Tour de France, and on the big day, Robin forgot his training shoes. So what did he do? He just hopped on his bike anyway and beat us all to the top. Those are the sort of characters you need on the final bend of the Boat Race."

Maximum indeed. If any technical explanation could be tweasered away from the naked heroism of the final burst for the finish, it was Cambridge's strangely lacklustre start. Seemingly caught unawares when the umpire dropped the starting flag, Oxford were seven seats ahead and driving for the apex of the Fulham bend before Cambridge had gained any momentum. If last year Oxford could count themselves unlucky victims of a mid-race restart, this time Cambridge could claim ill fortune. "Our cox had her hand up," Williams said. "So we missed the first stroke. We never got going." Though Cambridge had pulled back their disadvantage by the mile post, the margin of Oxford's victory, officially confirmed as two thirds of a length or two seconds, was eerily similar to the distance Cambridge forfeited off the stake boat.

All down the river, the advantage swayed like the tide. Cambridge, having surprisingly chosen the Middlesex station, needed to exert their dominance early, but Oxford held on and seemed sure to gain clear water in the long sweep through Surrey bend. Cambridge, looking the more fluent and relaxed, drew Oxford's sting. As the river turned back in the Light Blues favour once more, the choice of stations seemed inspired. "We knew it would be a close race and we wanted to have that advantage at the end," said Tom Stallard, the Cambridge president. Theory and history suggest that no crew rows round the outside of Mortlake and wins. No crew, except one.

Fifty years earlier, Oxford had buried their heads into the driving snow and rowed to victory from just such a lost cause. "We'd watched that race a couple of times in the past few days," said Dan Perkins, the Oxford No. 4. "There they were in this black-and-white film, rowing round that bend to win by a canvas. We had that in the back of our mind, the fact that it was possible." Perkins, who has had surgery to remove a tumour from the brain and yet has become one of the USA's most accomplished oarsmen, has an instinctive grasp of the line separating the possible and the impossible. "I don't know how we got there, we just hung on and hung on and gave it a little push at the end and that was just enough to break through, I guess." A description of his own extraordinary survival and Oxford's immortal victory.