Following our review of Oxford’s success in the 2014 Varsity Karting event, I met with two stars of the show. We chatted to James Lambton (1st) and Callum Hughes (3rd), about their experience in Varsity and in Oxford motorsport in general.

When asked about why they got into karting in Oxford, both drivers pointed towards childhood. Lambton told me, “I got into karting because of my dad. He used to take me down to the local track, and we would mess around like you do. After doing that for a while he felt I should have a go in a proper kart. We went for a few test days and we started racing.”

Hughes said, “When I was 8, for my birthday my dad took me to indoor karting: I loved it so much. Periodically we went, until for my 10th birthday – my dad bought me a proper kart and from there we just kept going.”

On his motivation, Callum confessed to be- ing a bit of a petrolhead. “Since I was young, I was always interested in cars as well. I am interested in motorsport and it went from there.” However Lambton just explained that it was all down to the fun factor, saying, “I wouldn’t say it is anything more than it is really good fun. I do not take it that seriously.”

I then asked whether these Oxford aces had any four-wheeled heroes. James Lambton men- tioned the elephant in the room. “I am not big on heroes, but if I had to say someone at the moment, I’d say Lewis Hamilton was the first good British driver I saw winning.”

His team-mate delved further back into the annals of motorsport history and cited F1 legend Nigel Mansell. He said, “When I started karting I was always interested in Nigel Mansell’s career because he had a really good season and absolutely dominated the field, and now I’d probably say Lewis Hamilton because he is doing the same.”

Karting isn’t the most obvious of sports to pick up at university, so I asked how the two drivers would recommend beginning. Lambton answered, saying, “The first thing I’d do would be to join the Motor Drivers’ Club. They run internal club championship anyone can go along to; you don’t need any prior experience, so it is great for beginners and good fun.”

Representing Oxford at any sport can prove a testing challenge; it’s not always easy to bal- ance work and high-quality extracurriculars. However, these boys seem to find managing it easy. Lambton said, “For me, I find it is not that bad because it is only one day every couple of weeks so you can plan for that and do your work accordingly. It’s not really a problem.”

Last month’s Varsity victory was incredibly impressive, and as the two men in front of me had stood on the podium, it seemed sensible to ask how that had felt to win.

Lambton explained that it’d been pretty overwhelming. “It took a while for it to sink in, to be honest. It was my first proper race win; in all the karting I had done before I never actually won a race, so it was a pretty good feeling!

Hughes laughed as he answered. “Well, I came third actually, but for Oxford it was great to win, we knew we had the stronger team but in motorsport you never know what is going to happen, so to get a win and to do it in our first year is very nice.”

This seemed like a good opportunity to gauge the rivalry within the Oxford ranks. Would they have rathered individual or team glory?

Lambton hesitates slightly but answers, “I was in the lucky position to get both but I would probably say the team win actually because if you get the individual win, yeah it is great you feel good but no one else feels that great. So it is nice to win the race and to win Varsity because everyone is in a good mood.”

His team-mate takes a controversial line though: he’d prefer the personal glory. “I was probably more about the individual win, because I always thought Oxford had a good chance of winning overall. Throughout the whole year we race together, we race for Oxford in the University Championship but we do not actually race against each other because we are on the same team. This was a day to see who was the best, so there was a bit of pride at stake.”

Moving on as the pair laugh, I wonder if there was much of a gameplan.

“What we actually did at the start of the Varsity race was we tried to engineer it so we ended up with three frontrunners. I started on pole and tried to let the guy in second in front of me because it is a disadvantage starting on the outside lane, in the end that didn’t go so well because he jumped the start and got a penalty, but generally we don’t fight each other too hard.

“We obviously do to a certain extent, but at the end of the day if you take someone out who is on the same team that is really silly so we just give each other room, if someone is coming up behind you who is clearly faster there is no point fighting it so we let each other pass.

“Tactics are a bit hard to engineer when you are out on the track, but it is all about being sensible and giving more room to an Oxford rather than a Cambridge rival.”

Our interview concludes as I ask the karters what they would prefer: a British Universities title, or Varsity success.

Lambton answers first, “I would have to say the Uni championship because there are good drivers at Cambridge and the competition was decent but there are some really fast guys at the universities track, so to win at that competition would be amazing,”

Hughes agreed, summing it up by saying, “Some of the other drivers are Ford Super Cup drivers and top level karters so to win that would be zing, and also Cambridge race in that too, and so we would be beating the Tabs at the same time!”

Five players. Thirty minutes. Two end zones. One Frisbee. How hard could Ultimate Frisbee be? Very, it soon transpired. Five minutes into the first match against previous champions St. John’s soon proved wrong those whispers of an “easy half-blue”.

Ultimate is a surprisingly intense game, requiring powerful sprinting ability, core strength and high levels of agility. Each team aims to catch the Frisbee in the other team’s end zone without dropping it, throwing it out or losing it to interceptions. Wind, opposition pressure and a time limit on possession of the frisbee often transpire to make this more difficult than it sounds. The thirty minute long matches soon had even the most seasoned teams rather red in the face as the bright mid-afternoon sun combined with 23 degree heat to add to the intensity of the matches.

Cuppers saw twelve teams competing for the title this year, with players of all abilities, from Blues through to the freshly formed St. Anne’s team, the latter having only just picked up a Frisbee five days prior to the tournament.

Novice teams are encouraged by something that its participants refer to as the “Spirit of the Game”. This stems in part from the self-officiated nature of the game, which fosters a strong spirit of sportsmanship and respect. One debate over a line contention was so civil that it prompted one novice to remark that this was the most polite game that she had ever played. The games are followed by a team huddle in which each team’s captain makes a short speech about the match.

Turning to the matches themselves, Balliol faced perhaps an unexpectedly difficult start against the newly formed St. Anne’s A team, winning by a 6-3 margin before settling into their rhythm and dominating subsequent matches. Their rivals for the title and previous winners St. John’s had an easier introduction tothe competition, scoring 10-0 and 10-2 victories over St. Anne’s B and Christ Church respectively. After three tough, thirty minute games, the group stages finished. Teddy Hall put forward an impressive effort in the semi-final of the cup, yet it was not enough to stave off the more experienced St. John’s side whose much larger squad helped to counter the effects of fatigue and secured them a 7-4 victory.

This victory saw St. John’s through to the final, facing their rivals Balliol. The two teams had already played this year during the Cuppers League with Balliol securing an 8-5 victory. The Cuppers final saw a much closer game, at times the two teams scoring point for point. However, true to this year’s form Balliol were able to secure victory over St. John’s, with the final whistle clocking in the scores at 5-4.

The Cuppers format included the ‘Plate’ competitions. allowing teams who had not won their groups to continue playing, giving everyone the same amount of game time. The winners of the Plate B competition were the oldest team on average, consisting of graduates from St. Cross, beating St. Anne’s to the title. The final of the Plate A competition saw the victory of the ‘Pick-Ups’ over ‘Kieran’s All Stars’.

The 150th Anniversary of the Athletics Varsity Match was always going to be a special day. Cambridge went in as 4-0 victors from 2013, but only the most partisan blue of either shade was predicting anything other than a series of very close contests.

Both the second team matches were hard fought affairs. Emma Perkins, winner of numerous matches and a former UK Indoor High Jump champion, was competing in her final match and dominated the jumps, setting second team records in the long, triple and high jumps. Wins on the track for Isabel Wray, Hannah Petho (in an 800m record) and Katie Hickson, along with Oxford’s strength in the heavy throws, kept them in the game, but the Cambridge sprinters and jumpers were too strong, and they ended up taking a 116-84 point victory in the Millipedes vs. Alligators. In the Centipedes vs. Alverstones, captain Ben Conibear led the Dark Blues from the front as he won the shot, discus and javelin, all in personal bests, for which he was awarded Oxford second team performance of the match and spent the rest of the evening sporting a natty striped blazer donated by a noted alumnus. The Centipedes actually matched the Alverstones for wins, sharing 10 apiece, with Aidan Smith and Ian Shevlin also putting in notable performances (along with CUAC’s Freddie Bunbury, who set a second team Pole Vault record with an excellent 4.15m clearance), but came up agonisingly short in the end, losing 109-103.

Oxford’s Women’s Blues team was sadly missing captain Katie Holder, due to ineligibility, and 10-time event winner Nadine Prill due to injury, but the team nevertheless stepped up to the mark. Incoming captain Montana Jackson and Christina Nick both picked up two events each, Jackson taking the 400m hurdles in her first ever race over the distance along with the triple jump, while OUAC discus record holder Nick unsurprisingly took that event, along with the shot. Supported by OUNC President Charlie Warwick, multi-eventer Emily Stone and ex- Light Blue Rose Penfold were all winners, as in the seconds Cambridge’s strength in the sprints proved too much. Captain Alice Kaye took the 200m and 400m, the latter in an excellent solo match record, and was second in the hundred to Emma Cullen while CUAC President Helen Broadbridge claimed the hammer record as CUAC ran out winners by 100 points to 89.

The Men’s Blues really was one for the ages, an epic encounter that ebbed and flowed until it was all over. The first field events set the standard. Michael Painter of Cambridge broke the hammer record with his first throw, while a humdinger of a long jump encounter saw ex-CUAC President Matthew Houlden take the lead with a 7.25m jump, only to have incoming Oxford Captain Sam Trigg equal that, before Houlden won the event with a staggering 7.48m leap, possibly the longest wind-legal jump in Varsity history. Trigg can count himself as unlucky, as in the triple jump his 15m leap saw him again behind an inspired Houlden, who broke the CUAC record. In fact, the field was nearly all Cambridge, with Welsh International javelin thrower Aidan Reynolds the only OUAC winner, in a 1-2 with American Arran Davies.

The track, though, was Oxford’s domain. Craig Morten took the 400m hurdles, ahead of Oxford captain Adam McBraida, but this was to be McBraida’s only loss of the day as he rampaged through a series of extraordinary wins in the 100m, 200m, 200m hurdles and 4x100m to inspire fear in the Cambridge ranks. Tom Frith repeated last year’s 800m victory in exactly the same style with a blazing last 100m, while Ismaila Ngum was victorious in the 110m hurdles and CUAC’s Matt Leach, a BUCS bronze medallist over the 5000m, took that and the Mile. The match came to a close with the winner of the 4x400m taking the spoils and the OUAC team of Gundle, Morten, McBraida and Club President Ralph Eliot, who had secured the silver medal at BUCS, romped home with ease.

The 400m saw Cambridge athlete Barney Walker in only his second race over the distance, take on George Gundle, OUAC’s fastest man in over a decade. Undeterred by this, Walker set off at a roaring pace, leading well at 200m, and then inexplicably kept on going. Gundle drew level on the home straight but Walker somehow found extra reserves of strength, the lead changing hands several times before the Cambridge man’s legs seemed to give way and he tragically stumbled and fell two metres short of the line in one of the bravest displays of quarter-miling seen in a while.

However, if this match is remembered for one thing alone, it will be for the steeplechase, and not what happened at the front (where OUCCC captain Alex Howard took a fine victory) but at the back. Tom Quirk had been leading with Howard for most of the race, but with two laps to go began to falter and it became clear that something was wrong. Approaching the bell, he broke down, clutching his leg, but then determined to finish got back up again and began to shuffle and limp onwards as the remaining runners passed him. CUAC second team runner Paul Hodgson then spontaneously decided to eschew any chance of a PB for himself to aid his fellow athlete, and the two proceeded to help each other round the track and over the barriers to the finish.