The Class of 2005/6 at Oxford and Cambridge Universities look set to provide an exceptional quality of Boat Race crew when the Dark and Light Blues do battle on April 2, 2006, in the 152nd Boat Race, sponsored by Xchanging.
Training started this week at both Universities and a number of Olympic and World Championships medallists have already signed up to the Clubs gruelling regime of juggling top-level training with tough academic courses in the hope of making the cut when the crews are announced early next year.
Oxfords returning and 2005 winning Blues look set to be Barney Williams, Olympic silver medallist in the four in Athens, and Mike Blomquist, world champion in the mens eight in Japan a month ago. Williams, Oxford President this season, has confirmed his place but Blomquist is yet to do the same.
In the meantime, Blomquists fellow world champion, Paul Daniels, has signed up as have Britains world championships finalist Tom Parker and Frenchman, Bastien Ripoll a member of the French eight at the World championships and probably the first Frenchman, should he win a seat next April, ever to have rowed in the events 177 year history.
Oxford will also benefit from the expertise of Jake Wetzel, who won Olympic silver with Williams in Athens a year ago and Stephan Molvig, an Athens Olympic gold medallist in the Danish lightweight four.
British world champions Peter Reed and Andy Hodge are coming to the end of their academic courses at Oxford and will not take part in the Race next year. However, GBs Colin Smith, a Blue in 2004 who competed in the gruelling single scull in Japan, will return to the squad.
We certainly have a good squad to work with this year, said Bowden recently. Lets see how it all beds down in the next few months.
Cambridge, meanwhile, under the guidance of new coach Duncan Holland, will have six returning Blues. They are: Tom Edwards, Luke Walton, Henry Adams, Sebastian Schulte, Tom James and cox Peter Rudge.
James was stroke to the GB eight at last years Olympic Games in Athens and, if selected, will be competing in his third Boat Race. Schulte was part of the German eight that won bronze at the World Championships in Japan. He is joined this year at Cambridge by his compatriot and team-mate from that crew, Thorsten Engelmann, and former world champion in the German four Sebastian Thormann.
Kristopher (Kip) McDaniell, who won world mens four bronze behind Great Britain and the Netherlands in Japan last month and who has previously stroked the Harvard eight, will also form part of the Light Blues training group as will a number of talented young British undergraduates.
We have an exceptional number of talented oarsmen this year and it will now be a question of how we blend them together to get the best result, said Holland.
Both Universities seem to be on track again to produce amateur but world class crews with an international flavour. This reflects the universities international outlook, making them attractive to undergraduate and postgraduate students from around the world. These students include the comparatively few who choose to add top-level training to tough academic courses, in the hope first of making the cut when the crews are announced early next year and then of winning a race for which there is no second prize, added Howard Jacobs of the Boat Race Company today.
An average of over 7.5 million people in the UK have tuned in to watch the Boat Race (peaking at 8.9million) over the past three years with over 100 million watching worldwide. Oxford won so tantalisingly by just one foot in 2003, there was a somewhat controversial clash in 2004 with Cambridge going on to victory and Oxford sought and won revenge in 2005 after a close battle in the early stages.
The series between the two Universities began in 1829 and Cambridge lead overall by 78 wins to 72.