Boat Race 2024 live: Results, times and updates as Cambridge secure stunning double over Oxford

Here are the respective teams ahead of the women’s race, which begins at 2.46pm.

Oxford Women

Coached by Allan French

Sarah Marshall (bow)

Ella Stadler (President)

Tessa Haining

Claire Aitken

Julia Lindsay

Annie Sharp

Lucy Edmunds

Annie Anezakis (stroke)

Joe Gellett (cox)

Cambridge Women

Coached by Paddy Ryan

Gemma King (bow)

Jo Matthews

Clare Hole

Jenna Armstrong (President)

Carina Graf

Carys Earl

Iris Powell

Megan Lee (stroke)

Hannah Murphy (cox)

We’re now just under an hour until the women’s race and coverage will begin in a matter of minutes.

The conditions look great on the River Thames and it’s a bright and sunny day in London.

Boat Race organisers have warned rowers to not enter the water on safety grounds after high levels of E coli bacteria were found on the River Thames course.

The new safety guidance could see the end of the traditional celebration for the winning team, where team members jump into the river and the cox gets a ducking. The 78th women’s race and 169th men’s race are still due to take place this weekend.

Last year, Cambridge men’s cox Jasper Parish was thrown into the Thames at Mortlake, as is the tradition at the end of the race. But a repeat is now unlikely after the River Action campaign group found an average of 2,869 E coli colony-forming units (CFU) per 100ml of water in 16 tests around Hammersmith Bridge.

Cambridge won the coin toss for the women’s race and cox Kate Crowley has chosen Middlesex.

Oxford will race on Surrey.

Oxford won the coin toss and chose Surrey, which means Cambridge men will race on Middlesex.

Here are the latest odds for the race:

Women's Race

Oxford 3/10

Dead heat 100/1

Cambridge 9/4

Men's Race

Oxford 8/15

Dead heat 100/1

Cambridge 11/8

The Boat Race course, known as the Championship Course, is four miles and 374 yards (6.8 km) long. It stretches between Putney and Mortlake on the River Thames in south west London.

The race is rowed upstream, but starts during the incoming tide to ensure that crews are rowing with the fast stream.

Annie Sharp is only half-joking when she predicts she will be the only rower as excited about starting the Boat Race in close proximity to the Thames’ new ‘super sewer’ as she is about the chance to snap a six-year winless stretch for Oxford’s women.

The 24-year-old’s enthusiasm for the Thames Tideway Tunnel, a £4.5 billion, 25km-long sewage structure which saw its final piece lifted into place this week, makes more sense when you learn that Sharp is a MSc water science, policy & management student at St Antony’s College.

Oxford last won the women’s Boat Race in 2016, the same year work began on the sewer, but might not be able to partake in the traditional celebratory dip should they win the 78th women’s edition this Saturday after high levels of E. coli were found along the Championship Course.

Speaking before the findings were announced, Sharp, who will occupy the six seat, told the PA news agency: “We are working with water and unfortunately against it sometimes with the flooding that we’ve had at Wallingford this year.