Oars-de-combat

‘Are you ready …’ The winds skim and frisk like a well-thrown flat pebble across the chop and chill of the mucky water. So do two slim, sleek boats carrying 16 broad and beefy men. Ships, towers, domes rip by …temples, wharves, jetties, tower blocks, bandstands, gullies; the Middlesex wall, the Surrey station, Harrods depository, Craven Cottage, the Riverside theatre; bikes on the towpath, daffs on the banks, pubs to the left of you, pubs to the right …and ‘hurrah! hurrah!’ from Hammersmith Bridge.

Boat Race day tomorrow, so truly spring has sprung at last. Did I say 16 hulking he-man hearties, each in a boat for eight? Each man heaving, hurting, symmetrically straining to turn perfect harmony into uncatchable speed? They call it an eight but, in fact, there are nine bodies in a boat. In their headlong propulsion backwards, these bulked-up eightsome reelers cannot remotely see where they are going. The tiny tot in the ninth seat can: he or she is lord of this dance, master, commander, puppeteer who, literally, pulls the strings of the whole heady enterprise. The cox is producer, director, choreographer, navigator, pilot, theodolite and sextant expert, chivvier, cheerleader, bully, nanny, nursemaid. But the wee sprite gets a mention in the public prints next morning only if he or she, you might say, ‘cox it up’. And whatever, win or lose, the big burly bods will ceremoniously throw him or her into the river at the end.

‘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.