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But oh, those Summer Eights
The thought struck me in the weeks leading up to this year’s Summer Eights that for all the alliteration in the title this year, it being 2011 – Eights Eleven – it was likely to be a physically gruelling experience. It’s one of the many paradoxes that I’ve come to recognize are inherent in bumps racing, and in this particular Trinity Term staple. Of course, they’re what set Eights apart from Torpids, and from typical head races. But it can be difficult to determine whether they make for a more exciting or terrifying experience.
Violence is implicit in the term Torpids itself. It connotes a torpedo, an explosive device. Torpedoing literally references the wrecking of another ship. So in Torpids, when boats mercilessly crash into one another, scraping the rudders, scratching the paint, and on occasion even swinging an oar against a member of another boat’s crew, it all seems rather natural. Even the weather fits in with the scene, grey clouds hovering ominously overhead, and rain or ice or sleet marring the already choppy waters of the Isis.
But Eights takes place in the summer, with sunny skies generally gracing the day. Warm temperatures and calm waves seem to fool participants, luring them into a false sense of security. And then the rowing begins. In a split second, crews are transported to an adrenaline-charged atmosphere of competition and ambition, resulting in eventual euphoria or disillusionment.
The juxtaposition of the loveliness of a summer day down by the river, colleges filling their boathouses with cheering supporters, drinking Pimms and barbecuing, gathered to support their crews, with the reality of what happens once athletes are in their boats, is sharp. As a coxswain, it’s magnified beyond even what the rowers must feel; to be in a position where you’re required to check on what every other crew is doing only heightens the tension.
And yet, when it comes time to make the aforementioned choice, it seems safe to say that Eights breeds more excitement than fright. There’s always a little of the latter, especially when uncontrollable incidents happen – for example, an oar slamming into your neck from another boat is never enjoyable. But on the whole, being transported to another world while racing down the river works both ways. Whether you bump, or you are bumped, or just row over down the length of the course, there will be a moment to soak up the sun and appreciate the memories being made.
Parky’s still Perky
I’m a tad nervous about interviewing Michael Parkinson. How do you go about interviewing a man who would do a much better job of interviewing himself? A man who had interviewed Muhammad Ali four times before I was even born. A man who by his own estimation has “interviewed 2,000 of the world’s most famous people” (and I reckon he rounded it down). Never mind nervous, I’m terrified. My preparation has consisted of mentally compiling my own autobiography, just in case he can’t adjust to the trade in roles. So it’s a relief when Parky’s first words to me are, “I like talking about myself”. Well, he probably wouldn’t have been that interested in my childhood caravanning holidays anyway.
It’s 10.30pm, he’s been at the Chelsea Flower Show all day and he’s just spent an hour and a half talking to a chamber full of eager Oxford Union members – and been thanked for it by being blinded by the flash of a hundred of cameras as they all clamour to get a picture afterwards. He looks weary, but plied with a pint of Guinness, he’s ready to do a bit more talking. And it seems my expectation of ‘once an interviewer, always an interviewer’ couldn’t be more wrong.
‘Meg Ryan called him a ‘nut’ and said she was ‘offended’ by his interview with her: easily one of TV’s most uncomfortable moments ever’
“I think that all that went as soon as I stopped doing the job. It took over my life in many ways but I always did other things at the same time. I mean I did radio as well as TV at the same time, I did writing at the same time, so I was never obsessive about the job at all.”
So did he really never feel the need to do a post-mortem on each show after filming ended? “It was amazing actually, I would go and do an interview, let’s say I’d interview Tom Cruise or someone like that, or Billy Connelly, and I’d go upstairs to the green room to have a drink, and somebody would say to me, who did you have on the show tonight? And I couldn’t tell them. I didn’t have a clue. And it used to be an automatic wipe like that. Because doing the number of shows I’ve done, reading the research I have to read, you have to clear your mind, you have to get rid of it, as soon as you’ve done it. Don’t linger. Don’t think, was that good, bad or whatever, wipe it out of your mind and start again.”
Parkinson’s eponymous chat show ran, on and off, from 1971 to 2007, so you would be forgiven for thinking that’s all he had ever done. But for the son of a miner, the path from a Yorkshire grammar school to a knighthood was not a direct one. Failing to carve a much longed-for career for himself in cricket, he left school with just two O-levels and began an apprenticeship at a local newspaper in Yorkshire. He would go on to report for the Manchester Guardian, before moving to Fleet Street. Met by a gaggle of budding journalists straight out of Oxbridge, Parkinson was intimidated, but found he knew a lot more about “reporting on a chip pan fire” from his hands-on work than they did from their degrees. Now, Parkinson is Chancellor of Nottingham Trent University and has an honorary doctorate from the University of Lincoln. I ask him whether he thinks that it’s possible for young people these days to break into journalism or television the way he did.
“Every career now, you need to have a university course for it,” he says. “My question would be, are there better ways into a job than that, than university, for certain things, and journalism would be one of them. It’s interesting, the best journalists that I worked with who came from university all read something other than the media, because in those days the media didn’t exist. So, Anthony Howard read English, Michael Frayn read Russian, and quite a few would have read History. That kind of degree is much more helpful to you than a media degree in a sense. I think that my advice to anybody, certainly going to Oxford, would be to do the kind of degree that you like doing. And then if you want to become a journalist , it doesn’t matter, it’s all preparation.”
His main message for other Parkys in the making is about perseverance. “You mustn’t give in. I mean if you want it bad enough there is something out there, just keep plugging away at it. It’s a strange kind of job these days. I don’t understand it like I used to.”
The style of television interviews might be changing, but I wonder whether it was ever possible to get people to open up under the glare of all the lights and cameras of the chat show set up. If reports are to be believed, Parkinson thinks the best way to get interviewees to relax and talk is by flirting with them (I don’t know if I should be disappointed, but it seems this is not a tactic he applies when the roles are reversed), but surely there’s more to the art of interviewing than that. Despite being famed for his probing questions (Meg Ryan called him a “nut” and said she was “offended” by his notorious interview with her, easily one of TV’s most uncomfortable moments ever), Parky claims the trick is not to push it too far.
“Well you’re not the inquisitioner, you’re not asking them their most darkest and intimate secrets. What you’re looking for in a talk show is entertainment. And if that entertainment can actually contain information, interesting information as well, that’s fine. Basically, it’s an entertainment programme. It’s a conversation, that’s what it is, that’s all it is.”
‘I want to walk into the Rovers Return with a flat cap and say, ‘Anyone here got a spanner?’ They can put that on my tombstone’
I wrack my brains to think of any interviewer on television these days who take the same stripped-back “conversation” approach. Not Graham Norton, whose show is filled with gimmicks and easy laughs, like ejecting audience members from their chairs as they speak. Nor Piers Morgan, who attracts wincingly mawkish answers from his guests, who seem to have a contractual obligation to cry. And certainly not Jonathon Ross, whose interviewees are always dwarfed by the host’s incredible ego. In the age of celebrity obsession, there doesn’t seem to be a lot of space for Parky’s trademark simplicity.
“I think that the conversation style of interview has gone,” he agrees. “The talk show now is best defined as a comedy show, basically. There’s nothing wrong with that, because that’s the way it’s always been, in America in particular. All their best and most successful TV hosts and talk show hosts have been comedians, and still are today. But I think there’s a gap if you don’t have that sort of conversational, straightforward talk show. I think there’s something missing there. Nowadays television is being commissioned differently than it ever was before, so it’s gone. But it will come back.”
As he nears the bottom of his pint glass, the time has come to ask him my most important question – how did it feel to appear on Neighbours? Surely a career highlight? The question is met with guffaws. You would have thought that having shared the screen with Dr Karl Kennedy, there would be very little left for one to achieve. But as we part he admits there’s one thing he’s yet to tick off the list.
“I’ve always wanted to appear in Coronation Street. I was promised a part there when I left television but they forgot about me. I want to break down in my car outside the Rovers Return, and go in there with a flat cap on and say, ‘Anyone here got a spanner?’ and walk out again, that’s all I want to do. They can put that on my tombstone.”
Street Style #7
This girl has perfected the knack of summer layering – your sartorial weapon against the ever-changing British weather. A fabulous maxi dress is made casual paired with a straw hat and a sparkly cardie and the colour is bang on trend.
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The changing face of journalism
Rageh Omaar was never supposed to be a journalist. Having immigrated to the UK from Somalia aged 5; he was destined to get a good education and train in a profession. Yet, as he stood before the Oxford University History Society on 30th May he was the picture of a successful and talented foreign correspondent. A man whose years showed only in his knowledge, he was hopeful, charismatic and radiated excitement.
Omaar read history at New College before graduating in 1991, and spoke passionately about the role that history had to play in the rest of his life, arguing that “history is enriching in its own right” as well as improving his understanding of the nations and situations on which he would eventually report. Omaar began his career as a freelance journalist for the BBC, but made a controversial move to Al Jazeera English in 2006. He had much to say about the BBC, criticising its lack of confidence following the Hutton affair and the lack of freedom granted to its senior journalists.
A broadcasting corporation dedicated to neutral journalism in an age where “the notion of journalistic neutrality is paper-thin”, Omaar discarded criticisms that the BBC’s ethos is strongly biased: “it is too big as an organisation to have a central ideology”. Omaar went on to state instead that each individual programme is known for its own identity and priorities. He recounted watching a crew enter a press conference: “when asked if they were from the BBC they said “No, we’re from Newsnight””. The BBC’s main issue is not its ethos or an ideological bias but its identity as a predominantly middle-class and newly self-conscious organisation.
Al Jazeera was less of an old-boys club. In fact, when it was created it was ground-breaking. Denying rumours that the station had ever broadcast unsuitable material, Omaar argued that its creation was “like a sort of rock through the glass house”. The station, which was created out of the ashes of BBC Arabic, represented a freedom of the broadcast media which had not been seen before in the Arab world. Omaar recounted the first time he had seen the channel: “I nearly fell off my chair when I saw an Israeli officer being interviewed”.
The conversation quickly turned from the established media to the role of social media particularly within the Arab Spring. A former BBC Middle East Correspondent and the creator of monthly investigative reports focussing on the area, Omaar seemed optimistic about the prospects for North East Africa and the Middle East. The Arab Spring remains “very hopeful, very positive and very moving”. Omaar acknowledged that after over 30 years of domination by single parties or individual people, their downfall “is always going to create a vacuum” and “vacuums will always be messy”, reminding us that it was unwise to predict the sweeping dominance of democracy in the region.
However, he remained positive about the impact of the movement: “Don’t lose sight of the huge psychological impact of the Arab Spring”. The “sheer courage it takes to hold a demo in Syria” and to protest throughout Tunisia is remarkable and has led to a change in the self-consciousness of the region and its leaders. Although there may be turmoil now, one thing which will remain with whichever leaders come to power is the newly established truth that there is “nothing you can do to control people intent on broadcasting their plight”. With this, new leaders will now have to accept and continually acknowledge the need to treat citizens with fairness or else “they might get me out”. It will forever be known that the people have “lost their fear”.
Omaar held in high regard the social networks and media which had enabled the Arab Spring to take place. “Of course, social media can exaggerate things”, he conceded, but what usually remains in the public mind is the important images, like Neda Agha-Soltan, an Iranian woman who was killed during the turmoil surrounding the 2009 Iranian elections, or Mohammed Zizzi, the Tunisian fruit-seller who burnt himself alive in Tunisia in December 2010 and could be said to have begun the movement. “The social media is part of the real-time news” and it is, “on the whole, a positive force”. “In Tunisia particularly the social media was essential”, however it is its ability to cross borders and allow individuals to identify with each other which is truly astounding. For the Arab people, videos posted on the internet of protests and oppression are powerful: “on websites in your own language, whether in Tunisia or the Lebanon, you can see your own life”. The social media allowed the Arabic people to “identify” with each other.
Although the international media has been attracted to Northern Africa by the Arab Spring, it seems a fair judgement that the continent as a whole seems to lack the media attention that it deserves: “in Africa it is always difficult to get enough coverage”. When I asked about the coverage of the Ivory Coast in particular, Omaar responded that the violence in the region had represented “elements and issues that go beyond Francophone and Anglophone reporting”. Although the Financial Times had covered the area well, this had not extended across the media simply because the issues raised were not those which our societies grasped. What was essentially a struggle to ensure that power was removed from an electorally defeated incumbent president, his ideology and his followers, was lost to the Anglophone media.
The attention turned to Somalia. The nation of Omaar’s birth, Somalia continues to be wracked by civil war and discontent. The issue which emerges from this region to touch the international community is that of piracy. This issue is “incredibly serious” and yet is not showing any long term improvement. There simply “hasn’t been a concerted approach that recognises the situation”. A long term solution would rest on land and with the Somali government. Although this seems impossible to achieve Omaar maintains that it could be done. However, as the Somali government continue “failing to give confidence to international partners”, NATO is left in an uncomfortable position of having to take action to patrol the area by boat and intervene in pirate activities. Once the Somali government can prove to the international community that a long term ground-based effort to remove piracy from its waters is going ahead, perhaps the situation will change.
Before our conversation ended we returned to the role of the media in conflicts across the world, and particularly its role in showing conflicts to viewers in the UK. Omaar was disparaging of the dominance of 24 hour news, which he claimed “on any channel is an echo chamber”. He spoke of one general in Iraq who was given instructions by Alastair Campbell to simply “keep it moving” in the media. This led to the issuing of statements which rumoured Basrah to have fallen a total of 17 times before it actually did. This form of media, he claimed, “is very easy to manipulate”.
Finally, our conversation turned away from the stories of conflict and hopes for progress to those who told them. Being a war correspondent is, almost by definition of the task, “very frightening”. However, Omaar reminded us of the beauty as well as the fear which is experienced within the job. War correspondents are “in a very privileged position being able to not only see but describe the rough draft of history”. They “see the best as well as the worst of human nature”, they see people “in situations you could barely imagine and transcend that”. Further, there is an awareness and choice in this career move: “No one should, or on some level does, hide from themselves that very bad things happen in that environment, as well as wonderful things”.
Rageh Omaar was never supposed to be a journalist. Yet as he stood before us, talking passionately, openly and frankly about the issues which affected the Arabic, African and British people alike, as he criticised his profession and measured its impact, as he held up the power of alternative forms of the media, it seemed clear he could have been nothing else.
5 Minute Tute: NHS Reform
What are the reforms all about?
The Health and Social Care Bill 2011 gives GPs the responsibility to commission most secondary care health services, replacing the current commissioning structure of primary care trusts and strategic health authorities with GP consortia; gives Monitor (the regulatory body for foundation trusts) the role of encouraging more competition, allowing more services to be provided from outside the NHS; and transfers PCT’s responsibility for health improvement to local authorities. Although not explicit in the Bill, it also has implications for the way medical education and training is organised, and this is the subject of a separate Department of Health consultation, Developing the Healthcare Workforce.
Why is there so much opposition?
Doctors, nurses, NHS managers, health economists, patient groups and politicians have all expressed concern that introducing more competition will break up or destabilise NHS hospitals, as the easier-to-provide services will be cherry picked by private providers, leaving the NHS to deal with more complex and expensive care and threatening the viability of hospitals. This worry is compounded by the removal in the Bill of the duty of the Secretary of State to provide a comprehensive health service. The proposed new structures do not guarantee involvement of a breadth of clinicians beyond GPs; the structures for commissioning for rare conditions that require a critical mass of patients are unclear; there is no clear vision for how quality and service standards will be embedded into consortia’s commissioning practices; nor how patients will be involved in decision-making about their care, or how consortia will be transparent and accountable to the public. The future of medical education and training is uncertain, as the SHAs, the host bodies of the Deaneries, are abolished, but there is uncertainty about where their essential functions, like quality assurance of training and trainee management, will sit.
What are the alternatives?
The restructuring of medical education and training should be paused for two years to allow the NHS restructuring to bed in first. Competition should be only on quality of services, not price. The economic regulator, Monitor, should focus on promoting quality, integration and collaboration, not competition. Many, including the RCP, have called for GP consortia to include other relevant health professionals, in particular including hospital specialists to advise on commissioning at national and local level. The new bodies should be publicly accountable and transparent, with integrated patient involvement, and the NHS Commissioning Board should embed national clinical and service standards across the system, including integrated care pathways.
What happens now?
The government paused the Bill’s progress in Parliament to conduct a listening exercise on the Bill which ended on 31 May. A report from this exercise will be submitted to the prime minister in the next few weeks. The Royal College of Physicians submitted evidence, and like other health organisations, is locked into an intense round of lobbying meetings with Ministers, MPs, Lords, and civil servants, suggesting changes and improvements. We hope that they have not only listened, but are prepared to amend the Bill accordingly…
The dangers of early achievement
The media loves a success story, especially if the protagonist is still a child. Those who become the youngest to achieve something or show exceptional promise, are often the focus of endless news coverage and are catapulted into the public eye. Too often though, in a desire to laud those young people who seemingly have pushed the boundaries of human capability, the potential negative effects of such achievements are ignored.
The case of George Atkinson, who recently became the youngest person to climb the highest peak on every continent at just sixteen, is a case in point. Questions that should be asked, about the motivations behind such a climb and the risks involved, have largely been neglected.
To complete the challenge George had to climb Mount Everest, the highest mountain in the world. It is a mountain where for every ten successful attempts, on average one climber will die. Indeed some of the world’s most experienced mountaineers have perished on its slopes. While it seems probable that every step was taken to ensure George’s safety, I imagine few parents would be comfortable letting a sixteen year old tackle such a dangerous and unforgiving challenge. In order to achieve ‘youngest ever’ records or when confronted by exceptionally gifted children, parents often let their common sense take a back seat.
A further problem is that it is extremely hard to know whether children are being forced into things by their parents; whether in effect they are merely participating in their parents’ dreams. George Atkinson climbed the first of his seven peaks aged just eleven, clearly it is unlikely that he was the one instigating that first climb. Indeed he was probably pliantly following his parents’ wishes for the first few of his seven ascents. The role of parents in such young achievers’ stories is an extremely vexing one. Often the line between encouraging a child’s passion, coercion and negligence is an extremely fine one. It is an issue that perhaps came to a head with the case of Laura Dekker, a thirteen year old Dutch girl, who wanted to sail around the world in 2009.
Laura, a keen and experienced sailor, was eager to make the trip and her parents were happy to let her, having encouraged her passion for sailing from an early age. The Dutch courts ruled that she was incapable of making such a voyage and that it would be irresponsible for her to be allowed to sail around the world alone. Dekker was placed into care for two months while her state of mind was assessed, though she later returned to live with her family. By implication the court ruled that Laura’s parents had been negligent. It is a problem that all parents of those who attempt to, or do achieve, great physical accomplishments when they are young have to ultimately face. Extraordinary children often pose their parents extraordinary conundrums that are rarely satisfactorily resolved. The problems ‘Too Much Too Young’ can pose however are not confined to physical feats of exertion. One only has to think of the numerous child actors who have either failed to make the grade in the long term or fell into a life of drink and drug abuse. Closer to home, those who over achieve far beyond their age group academically often face significant problems due to their preciousness. The story of Sufiah Yusef, who won a place to St. Hilda’s College, Oxford, at just thirteen, provides an interesting insight into the extraordinary pressure many academic prodigies are placed under. She was raised in an extremely intense academic environment where her father tutored her and her two siblings and so later ran away from Oxford, no longer able to take the continued academic expectations of her parents. Later it emerged that Sulfiah, now in her twenties, was working as a prostitute, probably in no small part due to the psychological breakdown that her academic gifts and uncompromising upbringing had led too.
Not every child prodigy though is unable to cope with the demands placed on them by university. One only has to think of Ruth Lawrence, who came to Oxford at the age of twelve and remains a successful mathematician. Or perhaps most impressively, the brilliant career William Pitt the Younger went on enjoy, after coming up to Cambridge aged fourteen. However those who come to university when they are much younger than their peers miss out on essential parts of the university experience. It is often hard for them to relate to, or be taken seriously by, their peers and obviously they cannot participate in many of the things that most students take for granted. Students under eighteen will not be able to share the common experiences during Freshers’ Week that are vital to making friends, a vital support network for any student. This is not, for the most part, conducive to an enjoyable, rounded or positive university experience.
Perhaps the most tragic result of these children’s preciousness however is that they lose out on what might be termed a normal, happy and fulfilling childhood. Often they are cut off from their peers for months on end, perhaps educated at home, and any friendships they do make remain transient. Relationships with their parents can also be distorted, as parents put pressure on them and forget more than anything else that these talented and capable children need support. We should celebrate those who achieve extraordinary things while young but never lose sight of the complicated ethical and moral questions that these children and their achievements raise.
Why Twitter is a serious threat to society
John Hemming was probably right when he told the House of Commons last week that it would be impractical to lock up everyone who re-tweeted information about a famous footballer’s alleged affair (and the resultant anonymised injunction), but that should be no cause for celebration. Those Twitterers were in open contempt of court, and violating a legal structure which allows a rare opportunity for privacy and the public interest to be weighed against each other. Before, injunctions might have played a role in restraining the worst impulses of the traditional media. This week’s developments demonstrate that the floodgates have been opened, with deeply troubling implications for privacy.
Let’s be clear: far from a victory for freedom, this is a triumph for that particularly insidious form of fascism, that vampiric impulse which compels us to pry into, disapprove of and ultimately ruin the lives of people we’ve never met in order to extract a few minutes of titillation from them. The fact that somebody is famous by no means gives us ownership over all the details of their lives. Public humiliation may not break the skin, but it can be as painful and traumatic a process as any physical assault, and should not be inflicted for trivial reasons.
Apologists for intrusion might claim that entering “public life” means that you must accept that your privacy will be curtailed. Beyond the basic flaws in that argument (which has little to say, for instance, about the family members of celebrities, who have no choice over their intimate secrets becoming coffee-break conversation) lies a deeper question: is that really the kind of bargain we, the public, want to strike? Do we want fame, and the power it bestows for shaping our culture, to be granted only to those sufficiently pathological to be willing to give up every last detail about themselves and their loved ones for the entertainment of the public? I hope not.
Obviously celebrities will sometimes want to suppress information where it is in the public interest that that information be released, and there is certainly room for debate about the implications of injunctions for freedom of speech. But being interesting to the public is not the same thing as being in the public interest, and the behaviour of the Twitter crusaders in the past weeks does not suggest that they are sufficiently capable of making that distinction to justify their putting themselves above the law.
If anything is fair game, and if Twitter users cannot be stopped, the dangers are clear. Privacy is more than an abstract noun – everyone needs to have parts of themselves that aren’t subject to the scrutiny of every voyeur, bigot or gossip that who takes an interest in them. Having some control over the face you present to the world is vital if you are to have meaningful social relations in different contexts. When Twitter users become a law unto themselves with the co-operation of MPs and the news media, we risk losing an important freedom, and one that may prove very difficult to win back.
Kick corruption out of football
I don’t like Sepp Blatter. Perhaps I am still bitter about FIFA’s ridiculous decision not to countenance goal-line technology, thus ruling out Frank Lampard’s perfectly legitimate goal against Germany in the World Cup. It could be due to his role in the travesty of our failed bid for the 2018 tournament. Maybe it is because he looks like a balding Swiss version of Father Christmas. Or perhaps it is because he – a man many believe to be corrupt – is the head of our world’s football organisation. He is the pantomime villain at the top of a corruption scandal exposed by the world”s media over the last few weeks.
Lest we forget, this is a man who, on the subject of the illegality of homosexuality in Qatar (World Cup hosts 2022) quipped; ‘I would say they [gay fans] should refrain from any sexual activities’. Lovely. It appears Blatter has a way with words. In 2003 he confidently stated; ‘neither FIFA nor its President have anything to hide, nor do they wish to’. By 2011 it emerged that this couldn’t have be further from the truth, with the recent suspension of Confederation presidents Mohamed Bin Hammam and Jack Warner pending a further inquiry into bribery claims. They allegedly paid Caribbean delegates $40,000 each to vote for Bin Hammam in the upcoming FIFA election. Clearly FIFA do in fact have something to hide. Furthermore, a leaked email from Blatter’s general secretary Jerome Valcke claimed Qatar had ‘bought’ hosting rights for the 2022 World Cup. Instead of questioning the role of the man at the helm of these dubious operations however, he has instead been re-elected unopposed.
I therefore fully back the FA’s ultimately unsuccessful attempts to prevent his re-election. Blatter has been head of a borderline corrupt institution for too long. Although the FA’s stance may further weaken the relations between our national and global football bodies it finally shows some backbone against a man who will have lead FIFA for 16 years by the time of his next election. Until this man loses his post the beautiful game is at risk. But due to the result of this month’s uncontested election we shall not have this man’s head on a Sepp Platter for at least another four years.
Oar-some Oriel bump Christchurch
More Lycra that you could shake a stick at. Boat shoes by the bucket load. A ridiculous variety of college insignia ranging from fluttering flags to face paint, ribbon and nail varnish. For the hundreds of rowers in Oxford, race day had finally arrived on the Isis. Three klaxons, 13 races and 47 bumps later the first day of Summer Eights was over, climaxing in a compelling battle for the Men’s Division One title of Head of the River where Oriel M1 (that’s men’s first boat to you and me) took on the might of Christchurch M1.
This week is the sum of a term’s work for college rowers. All the time spent sweating in steamy, often topless and borderline homoerotic erg sessions, all the hours spent perspiring on the water and squatting in the gym finally come into fruition. To some this may beg the question as to why row at all, but for those clad in the Lycra of their college; this is the peak of the annual rowing calendar. Get it right and bump every day and the reward is the prestigious ceremonial “blade”. Mess up, or catch a dreaded crab, and a terms preparation will sink into the depths of the Isis.
The great strength of Eights is the fact that each race brings a different blend of entertainment or seriousness. The lower divisions are typified by fun, with creative attire more significant than the technical excellence of crews. These VII’s ranged from leopards in leotards, exhibitionists sporting only Speedos and swim hats to a men’s boat braving some rather seductive fishnet stockings. My personal highlight was watching Jesus M3 still manage to bump despite being dressed from head to foot in fetching Viking attire. Evidently the weight of their mighty weapons did not slow them down, and motivated by the power-ten code words of “rape and pillage” they captured John’s M3, plundering their boat. Great effort.
Brief research on YouTube into Eights painted a picture of absolute carnage. I envisaged boats smashing into each other with little regard for the lives of their rowers, the sound of carbon hulls breaking bones, coxes heroically diving into the dingy water to avoid decapitation and pileups that the M62 would be proud of. Compared to this weak journalistic preconception, the day was a rather tame affair, with no bloodshed – apart from the Vikings obviously. Three klaxons were blown by race stewards to prevent such apocalyptic collisions. Apart from a rogue cruiser that wreaked havoc in the women’s Third Division race, contests were kept safe and drama came only from events on the water.
For the rowing purist the action gained significance with each coming division as boats grew in technical prowess. Increasingly races extended through the gut, in front of the numerous fans collected at college boathouses. In the men’s section John’s, Oriel and Anne’s all had strong days, bumping with both first and second boats. New on the other hand had a day to forget, with all three of their crews being bumped. For the women, three of four Wadham crews managed to gain places, with Merton bumping twice in one day to move into Division One.
After Balliol W1 serenely defended their place at the Head of the River in Women’s Division One it was time for the final race of the day. Men’s Division One is the premier event at Eights, but often delivers drab racing as the skill of each top crew cancels each other out. Not so on Wednesday as Christchurch – so often the dominant force in college rowing – were knocked off the Head of the River by an Oriel boat spurred on by four returning Blues. A poor line through the gut by the Christchurch cox cost them dear, as they were forced to concede right in front of their boathouse and a colossal Oliver Wyman banner. He will not be happy. Nor will Christchurch fans, for whom this must be a bitter blow, having been Oxford’s top college since 2009. All this will increase the delight of their rival Oriel support. For them the hope must be for a period of dominance such as that seen from 1978 to 2002, where they were Head of the River for 20 out of 25 years. For the rest of us, let’s hope for more excitement, and carnage, in the upcoming week.
