The Oxbridge Boat Race is the highlight of the sporting year – here’s why

I don’t really like boats.

I have bad memories of travelling in little passenger boats in rough seas around the Isles of Scilly on a childhood family holiday. When I hired a rowing boat with a friend in the Lake District in my late teens, I spent most of our time on the water worrying that we would sink.

And when I was at university, I couldn’t fathom why anyone would voluntarily get up at 5am to mess about on the river.

When it comes to the Boat Race, however, I’ll be glued to the telly.

To a very modest extent, I feel personally invested in the event, having been an undergraduate at Oxford twenty years ago. I will certainly want the dark blue boat to win, as Oxford hope to close Cambridge’s overall 82-80 lead in the annual race.

Yet my love for the contest is not a consequence of the fact that I happened to go to one of the universities that takes part in the competition. I watched it avidly for years before going off to do a degree; in those days supporting Cambridge because we lived half an hour away from the city.

No, the primary reason for the Boat Race’s appeal is its raw, sporting drama.

Whichever way you cut it, rowing a boat for just over four miles along the Thames is an impressive feat. To do so in concert with seven other crew members is all the harder, even before you throw in the factor of an opposing team and a historic rivalry.

For around 17 minutes, the racers put every ounce of their fibre into powering their boats through the choppy water.

In a two-boat race, it’s inevitable that there are times when a clear leader quickly emerges, never to be overtaken. On other occasions, the drama is maintained throughout: as coxes compete for the best water, as blades clash, and as the race umpire hollers “Cambridge” or “Oxford” through a loudhailer.

Only once has there been a dead heat – and the technology to judge a close finish wasn’t all that advanced in 1877. But there have been seven sinkings or near sinkings, most recently in the 2016 women’s race. Oars have been broken, rowers have collapsed, protestors have disrupted proceedings and crews have mutinied.

The Boat Race has also given us early views of rowing greats such as Matthew Pinsent and Tim Foster – not to mention Hugh Laurie. It provides exposure for a sport that for the most part pops up on the national radar only during the Olympics.

Despite all this, critics of the race continue to hold it up as an unacceptable anachronism: a means of reinforcing the central role in British life of educational institutions favoured by an elite establishment.

Its role in the nation’s public conscience is, in this narrative, divisive rather than unifying.

Really, this is ideological nonsense, decrying tradition as a sine qua non and ignoring the degree to which the two universities have become ever more inclusive of talent from all backgrounds.

True, the Boat Race is a product of history, of a time when Oxford and Cambridge dominated what we would now call the university sector. The only other universities to exist in England when the race first took place in 1856 were Durham and London.

But it is that backstory that lies at the heart of its drama, which is most fundamentally founded on the friendly but deep-seated rivalry between the two institutions.

That this should have created an event which appeals to millions of people who have little or no particular connection to either university is not an indictment of undue Oxbridge influence, but simply a reflection that, in sport, history matters.

What’s more, in a world in which sport is increasingly ruled by money, the Boat Race stands as a lasting reminder of the Corinthian spirit that once underlay much sporting endeavour in this country. Is that really something to be dismissed so glibly?

The Boat Race isn’t just for poshos, nor are the universities which compete in it. Let’s celebrate this sporting event for what it really is, not turn it into a symbol of an entitled elitism that has already for the most part disappeared.