| YES | if the statement agrees with the views of the writer |
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The Oxford vs. Cambridge Boat Race
The boat race now has a strong American accent but it is still mostly won, and lost, by English public schoolboys
Sporting ritual draws friends and countrymen together. Every year in American, for instance, the Super Bowl empties shops and restaurants as families gather round their televisions to watch the football game. Americans abroad seek each other out to do the same, drink Budweiser beer and feel homesick.
In England, some of these annual rituals have a class dimension. Along with Henley, Cowes and Ascot, the most notable is the boat race between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge, which takes place for the 142nd time this weekend. If the weather is good, as many as 300,000 people may gather on the banks of the River Thames on Saturday April 6th to watch 16 sturdy men plus their coxes sweating over the 4.25-mile course. Actually, most people will see the boats flash past, catch up with friends from Oxbridge days, drink Pimms and lemonade (a peculiar concoction enjoyed by English society) and slip into a pub for the rest of the afternoon.
The race has always had an upper and upper-middle class taste. First rowed in 1829, it dates back to the glory days of Empire, when the young men in the boats would go on to rule the colonies. So it is ironic that in many of its practices the boat race is now more American than British. The coaches are well-paid. Both universities give perks to deserving oarsmen. Cambridge offers sports bursaries (athletic scholarships); Oxford sometimes provides free accommodation. Several of the oarsmen enter the universities to row rather than to study (although, as at the best universities in the United States, they still have to be up-to-scratch academically). The race is commercially sponsored and it is televised. Such characteristics are commonplace in American college sport but rare in Britain.
However, it is the fact that some of the rowers are not English, or even undergraduates that really raises eyebrows in England. For some sports commentators, these are worrying signs of national decline.
They could not be more wrong. For one thing, foreign nationals have been rowing in the boat race for at least a century; for another, even in the past few years, when the race has been heavily sponsored by businesses with deep pockets, floppy-haired former pupils from famous English public (that is, expensive private) schools have continued to predominate, as they always have.
Besides, the Americans who row in the race are usually as aristocratic as Americans can be. This year there is one American in the Cambridge boat and four in the Oxford boat. Some learnt to row at exclusive boarding schools; all studied at ivy-league colleges before coming to Britain.
Rowing is intrinsically a sport for the affluent. Any school that offers it must also have a river, or at least access to one. The equipment is expensive, and is getting more so as new training devices are developed — such as rowing tanks, where oarsmen can row indoors.
Men do not reach their peak strength, however, until their late 20s — and rowing is a sport where strength matters. Rowers of Olympic standard can effortlessly lift grown women as if they were little children. So it is not surprising that as Oxford and Cambridge have increased the numbers of graduate students that they accept, the number of graduate students rowing in the boat race has increased, too.
This means that the boat race produces rowing of a high standard. Both boats consistently contain national oarsmen and sometimes Olympic medal winners --- although the sporting-career pattern of the rowers has changed. When fewer graduate students rowed, the event was the start of an international career; now it may be the end. Oarsmen who have rowed in almost every race that matters come to one of these two universities for their swan song.
Earlier this century, members of Oxford and Cambridge university cricket, athletic and rugby teams were also world class. They are now well below that standard. Only the boat-race teams have remained of international calibre, at least in a good year. Or so it is said. Actually proving it is quite difficult. One of the oddities of the boat race is that the teams rarely race against anybody else. Other rowing teams are now just gearing up for the summer rowing season. But for the Oxbridge oarsmen, the boat race is the culmination of six months of hard training; and after the race the teams tend to splinter, often never to row together again.
But, proof aside, the experts are confident that in rowing at least Oxbridge is still world class. Exactly why rowing has remained within reach of international standards while other Oxbridge sports have slipped is something of a mystery. The money, of course, helps — rowing standards are driven in part by technology. The dedication to training that the boat race exacts is perhaps another part of the explanation. In America, college teams are forbidden to practise more than a certain number of hours a week; no such rule holds in England.
Given all this, it will be interesting to see the outcome of the next race. The Oxford-Cambridge boat race is watched because it has always been watched and because these two universities continue to fascinate the English.