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Alexander Larman

What happened to the Rishi Sunak I knew at school?

‘Are you ready? Go!’ is the timeless command from the starter on the stake boat. Any dolt can start on the order ‘Go!’ so the first thing any promising cox must learn is to start on the word ‘Are’. In Christopher Dodd’s classic history The Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race (1983), he elaborated on the tricks of these exhorting midget maestros:

Always point the shell the way you wish it to point; never give an opponent the advantage of position if you can possibly avoid it; have the measure of your own men as well as the course; be aware who can take insults and who cannot; do not be averse to speaking just loud enough for the opponent crew to hear if you want them to; know how to wind up your crew and also wind them down, and sometimes wind some up and some down simultaneously.

It would be no surprise tomorrow if the umpire threw out a crew and simply abandoned the race, particularly at the start, for such has been the increasingly aggressive venom in recent races of the two flyweight champions with the steering halyards in their tiny, frozen hands. Oars-de-combat ain’t in it. A cox has to be intrepid, sure, and savagely vicious with it; any year now, I fancy, one or other Blue-boat cox is going to lose it completely, shout ‘Oh, rowlocks!’ and simply ram the rival boat amidships. Which would remind old-timers of 1978 when, in choppy seas, poor Cambridge sank midstream and, as they gurgled into the deep, television commentator Jim Railton, with daintily prim olde-tyme BBC circumlocution, immortally set the nation in a roar by describing the unfortunate (but to those warm and dry at home hilarious) waterlogging as ‘leading to a dolphin effect which could yet cause a possible drowning situation’.

The Boat Race is now ITV’s, of course. Watch closely tomorrow. The two jaunty little jockeys will rule the waves, knowing when to zig and when to zag — and when, in extremis, to abandon ship.