//As kids we all picked a side and watched it every year and we are about as far from posh as you can get.//
Indeed Tora. I also get a bit miffed when I hear talk of being only for “posh” people. I’m far from posh but I know a little about rowing as I rowed at school for over four years. Being a little on the light side and right-handed I usually rowed at Bow or three. I never made it to the first eight but was a regular member of the school’s 2nd VIII. For a year I was the school’s “Deputy Captain of Boats.” I participated in the “Schools Head of the River Race” (SHORR) for three years (it’s called a “race” but is actually a time trial) and our 2nd VIII boat finished eighth in my last outing. This sounds a bit of a failure but there were then (and still are) around 250 eights taking part. We beat a number of public schools who definitely were “posh” and were renowned for their rowing (including Eton and Winchester, as well as the Tideway Scullers School) but most importantly of all we beat our school’s first eight, who finished a lowly 20th. Having such a large field with a wide spread of starting times, a crew can get lucky with the wind and especially the outgoing tide, and odd results like ours is not that unusual.
Like the Varsity race it’s a tough event, taking place on The Tideway and being rowed near enough over the Boat Race course but in reverse, from Chiswick Bridge to Putney. There is also a fair bit of rowing to do getting from your host boathouse to the start. At over four miles it takes it out of the participants – well it did me and I always felt after about ten minutes that I wanted to die, and five minutes after that I wished I had! But you had to keep going for the good of your crew and the school. And after all that you had to get back to your hosts’ place.
Every year we hear these opinions of the Boat Race and it always saddens me. There seems to be a lot of envy disguised as unjustified disgust. Mrs NJ and I always have a 10p bet on the event (she’s Oxford and I’m Cambridge for no particular reason) and we watch the race with a beer – and 10p - in hand. I’m still in touch with a couple of my fellow crewmembers and we try to get down to the Tideway to watch the SHORR most years to watch the event (though it has to be said that the liquid lunch that follows seems equally important) and I always feel proud that I was once part of that spectacle. There’s nothing posh about rowing – it’s just that too few schools provide the facilities for it. But that’s no reason to run it down.