See Liz's photo gallery from the racing here.

With just under a month to go until the main event, the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race crews were up in London racing over the Championship course on the Tideway this weekend.

The pre-race fixtures, in which the first and second boats face a range of opposition from local clubs as well those from further a field, are normally held over both days of the weekend (Cambridge and Goldie on one day, and Oxford and Isis on the other) and although they race over the whole course, this is done in two parts with a break just after Hammersmith.

This year, the Cambridge blue boat had been scheduled to race an Italian eight on Saturday, but the Italians pulled out and the race was rescheduled to the Sunday, against Molesey boat club. This meant that both Cambridge and Oxford (racing an USA eight) would be on show on the same day.

Despite rumours that they’d flown in last night and were flying out immediately after the race, the US rowers actually arrived in the UK on Thursday, most of them coming straight from training in Seattle, and were due to head back stateside on Monday.

The crew, which contained two of last year’s winning Oxford blue boat, Mike Blomquist and Chris Liwski, have been staying in Oxford during their fleeting visit, and borrowed a boat from OUBC, though they had brought their own slides and wedges with them. As one of the crew put it "we have a couple of guys with 9 foot long legs, there are some freaks of nature in the boat." Of course, it never does any harm to have your own fittings when you’ve borrowed a boat from the opposition...

The Tideway can be an unforgiving place when the weather starts acting up and though sunny, the strong head wind at the start meant conditions were quite rough for the first race at 15:30 (Isis vs a University of London crew).

It wasn't much better when Oxford and the US eight lined up at the start half an hour later but neither the conditions nor their jet lag seemed to pose much of a problem as the Americans had settled into a really nice, long smooth rhythm by the milepost, using their extra height and weight to their advantage in the head wind. Oxford on the other hand were making slightly heavier going of it and appeared to be rowing a bit short.

The US eight won the first race by a length and a half and the second by two thirds of a length. Oxford had started to find more speed in the second piece but the crews clashed, with seven man Chris Liwski’s oar catching and flipping that of the Oxford six man Barney Williams. Oxford came out of the clash the worst, losing about three quarters of a length. Afterwards, Chris seemed quite pleased with his efforts, commenting with a grin “the clash was an accident, but flipping Barney’s oar wasn’t, and you can quote me on that!”

The wind had died down slightly for the last race of the day, Cambridge against a Molesey eight which, though short of race practice, contained a number of GB internationals and Olympians.

In their first race Cambridge moved into an early lead, but the crews clashed about 500m from the start and the Molesey bowman lost his blade. The umpire then stopped and restarted the race from the end of Putney embankment. Cambridge coped much better with the rough water and had soon taken the lead again. They went on to win both pieces by a comfortable margin.

The official crew announcements for the Boat Race, take place in London on Monday morning and although changes are possible, it looks unlikely that the line-ups announced will be any different from those on show today. As usual there is a good international spread through out the crews, with a strong North American contingent across both light and dark blue boats again this year.

Paul Daniels and Jamie Schroeder (USA) along with Barney Williams and Jake Wetzel (CAN) look likely to be in the Oxford blue boat, while Cambridge will probably have Kip McDaniel (CAN) and Luke Walton (USA) in their blue boat line up.

Oxford

Paul Daniels
Robin Esjmond-Frey
Tom Parker
Bastien Ripoll
Jamie Schroeder
Colin Smith
Jake Wetzel
Barney Williams
Nick Brodie

USA
Josh Inman
Sam Burns
Chris Liwiski
Mike Bloomquist
Matt Schnobrich
Patrick O’Dunne
Dan Berry
Marcus McElhenny

Cambridge
Tom Edwards
Thorsten Englemann
Tom James
Kip McDaniel
Seb Thormann
Luke Walton
Lieran West
Peter Rudge

Molesey
Richard Ockendon
Phil Simmons
Clive Kennedy Burn
James Stephenson
Toby Wallace
Tom Salisbury
Simon Fieldhouse
Andy Triggs-Hodge
Acer Nethercott