The Boat Races 2017

The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The race takes place on the 4.2-mile Championship Course, between Putney and Mortlake on the River Thames in south-west London. For the second time in the history of the event, the men’s, women’s and both reserves’ races were all held on the Tideway. The races were watched by around a quarter of a million spectators live, more than five million domestic television viewers, and were broadcast around the world by a variety of broadcasters.

About The Boat Races 2017 in brief

Summary The Boat Races 2017The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the universities of Oxford and Cambridge. The race takes place on the 4. 2-mile Championship Course, between Putney and Mortlake on the River Thames in south-west London. For the second time in the history of the event, the men’s, women’s and both reserves’ races were all held on the Tideway on the same day. The races were watched by around a quarter of a million spectators live, more than five million domestic television viewers, and were broadcast around the world by a variety of broadcasters. The two main races were also available for the first time as a live stream using YouTube. The event was broadcast live on the BBC, and received a viewership of 5 million viewers across Europe, North America, Australia and South Africa. The men’s race was umpired for the second times by the Olympic gold medallist Matthew Pinsent, who won the Boat Race himself with Oxford in the 1990 and 1991 races before losing in the 1993 race. The women’s race, which first took place in 1927, was usually held at the Henley Boat Races along the 2,000-metre course, but on at least two occasions in the interwar period, the women competed on the Thames between Chiswick and Kew. The Oxford women went into the race as reigning champions, having won the 2016 race by 24 lengths, with Cambridge leading 41–30 overall. Cambridge’s Goldie were beaten by Oxford’s Isis, their seventh consecutive defeat.

In the women’s reserve race, Cambridge’s Blondie defeated Oxford’s Osiris, their second consecutive victory. Cambridge won by a large margin following a disastrous start by the Oxford boat, Their second win in the past ten years, it took Cambridge’s advantage in the overall standings to 42–30. TheOxford men’s boat won their race after leading from the start, their fourth victory in five years and taking the overall record in the event to 82–80 in Cambridge’s favour. In January 2016, it was announced that the sponsors would be donating the title sponsorship to Cancer Research UK and that the 2016 event was retitled “The Cancer ResearchUK Boat Races”. There is no monetary award for winning the race, as the journalist Roger Alton notes: “It’s the last great amateur event: seven months of pain for no prize money’”. The women’s race was also streamed live on BBC Online and Fox Sports in Australia and TSN in Central America and Canada, and on Sky México across Central America, EBU in Europe, and Sky Sports in South Africa, and SuperSport in South America. The crew led by Cambridge’s chief coaching team led by TSN’s TSN TSN coach Terence Tredell was led by their crew chief, Ashton Brown, President of Cambridge University Women’s Boat Club. Oxford’s women had won the previous year’s race by a margin of two and a half lengths, and leading overall with 82 victories to Oxford’s 79.