Commentary
The Other Boat Race, 2004
by Liz Wray
posted on March 22, 2004
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| Men's crews |
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| Women's crews |
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| click images for full-size version |
A cold and very windy Sunday afternoon saw Oxford and Cambridge rowing fraternity descend on Henley for the other boat races - Lightweight Men and Reserves, Heavyweight Women and Reserves and the Lightweight Women's crews.
The "other boat races" (run over 2k on the Henley royal course but in the opposite direction), tend to have a greater representation of the undergraduate population of both universities than the crews in the main boat race. As a result, there tend to be less non-British competitors than in the heavyweight men's crews but there was still a US presence in several of the competing crews:
Kaleen Love (university of Arizona and Pembroke college) 2 seat in Osiris, the Oxford women's reserve crew
Rachel Hanley (Stanford and Homerton College) 2 seat in Blondie, the Cambridge women's reserve crew
Elizabeth Laws (Groton School and Pembroke College) 5 seat in Blondie
Megan Patrick (Princeton and St Hugh's) Cox for the Oxford women's blue boat
Jake Goodman (Rutgers and New College) 4 seat in the Oxford Lightweight men's crew
Justin Accomando (US Naval Academy, and Balliol college) 5 seat in the Oxford Lightweight men's crew
Photo gallery of the crews in action
The bad weather, which was responsible for the cancellation of the men's head of the river race on the Tideway the day before, was still in evidence and there was a strong cross tail wind for all five races, helping to produce fast times and favouring crews on the Berkshire station, especially over the first half of the race. Oxford, who won most of the tosses, had the Berks station for all races expect the men's lightweight.
Rowing clubs often have winning streaks and the Cambridge dominance of the other boat races in the 1990s has been reversed over the last five years. On Sunday, for the second time since the five race format was introduced in 2000, Oxford won everything.
With the exception of the women's blue boat race (where Oxford won by four lengths), all the races were close and exciting but the dark blues responded to any challenge Cambridge could muster. As to whether the light blues can break their losing streak or not, that question will be answered on the Tideway next Sunday evening.
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