With a finishing time of 17 minutes exactly, the dark blues didn’t break any records, but beat a broken Cambridge by three and a half lengths.

Cambridge made a poor start, yet led the race by a good length up until the sweeping middle bend, one on which they should well have pulled away. However, this was not the case. After a clash of oars just as Cambridge Cox Rebecca Dowbiggin was calling for a push, the Oxford crew put in an extra shift to accelerate away in the lead.

With the Cambridge crew in their sight, the Oxford eight, featuring five Olympians, pushed themselves over the line to reduce the gap between the two universities to just four victories.

Credit must surely go to coach Sean Bowden after ten years in charge, in which his crew have been victorious seven times:

“It’s really a fantastic boat. Our speed in training was the best we’ve ever had,” he said.  “They put in a polished performance and dealt with all the pressure and the hype.”

Every sports fan is aware of the universal nature of rowing as an endurance discipline, pushing most areas of the human body to extremes unheard of in other sports. The taste of victory must be exceptionally sweet for the eight men who put in six months of training for those 17 minutes of burning exhaustion.