So we won’t be watching the Boat Race next year on the BBC, but on Channel 4. Never again will we hear the likes of John Snagge commentating on the fogbound 1949 race: ‘I can’t see who’s in the lead but it’s either Oxford or Cambridge.’
It’s a funny thing the Boat Race: an eccentric contest between the country’s two most distinguished academic institutions, rowed against the flow of the Thames along a tidal stretch with winds as ungovernable as a nursery school class, taking place at a time of year when the water can be in ferment. It’s a cranky British institution whose natural home should be the Beeb, another cranky British institution.
The Boat Race is an event that has risen above its quirkiness to become something much more than a dotty exercise for 18 amateur sportsmen and women. Thanks mainly to the BBC, it has a large TV audience (2.4 million at the last count), along with thousands on the riverbank. Most of the people who care about the result don’t have anything to do with either Oxford or Cambridge, and that has got to be largely down to the Beeb.
So why has it gone to Channel 4? And should anybody give a damn? After all, C4 has an enviable record of vigorous guerrilla raids on sports broadcasting: a tennis final here, a Grand Prix there, even some cricket. It has covered the Paralympics brilliantly since 2012, backed by its tear-shedding ‘Meet The Superhumans’ campaign. And Adam Hills’s spin-off show The Last Leg is still one of the biggest hitters on the channel. It has been innovative and creative, with a terrific record in minority sports, and good luck to it. There is talk of a disability boat race, and a good thing too. The sports team also do C4’s Crufts coverage, so expect a tiny coxswain mixing it with a giant schnauzer.
But what does all this tell us about the BBC, which moved quickly to deny reports that head of sport Alex Kay-Jelski let it go because he thought it was ‘elitist’? There just wasn’t enough return on investment, says the Beeb. Hmmm. I much prefer what Pete Andrews, C4’s head of sport, said: ‘It’s the crown jewel of the rowing calendar and consistently captures the imagination of the British public year after year, both on the side of the Thames and in living rooms across the country.’
If the BBC loses any more sport, shouldn’t the department be shut down? The World Athletics Championships in Tokyo were thrillingly presented by Jeanette Kwakye but you had to look hard to find it. The Six Nations is still on terrestrial TV, just, with the BBC having the rights to Wales and Scotland home games. In other words the cheaper ones. I’m told the BBC came within a whisker of losing the London Marathon. There’s always Wimbledon, I suppose. Always? Don’t count on it.
The Boat Race is a cranky British institution whose natural home should be the BBC, another cranky British institution
Let’s not let that sensational Ryder Cup pass without one last thought: what Shane Lowry did was incredible, especially after putting up with a load of cack from tanked-up Americans. He birdied the difficult 18th, under the greatest pressure imaginable, to halve the match and make sure Europe kept the Cup. It was an absolute test of nerve and skill and after that incredible victory jig, an offer of a place on Strictly is surely just a formality. Nobody wants to relish an injury, but thank heaven for Viktor Hovland’s neck problem, which yielded a priceless half-point without which Europe might not have won at all.
After the shocking diagnosis of motor neurone disease for Lewis Moody, ferocious, heroic and a rugby titan for Leicester and England, are we to conclude that rugby is dragging its feet on making the sport safer? Or should we just accept that rugby, like boxing, is a sport that carries an extreme danger to your health?
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