In her latest blog, Emma Boggis, Alliance CEO and former Boat Race competitor, shares her insights on the race and what it means for sporting equality now the women's event has equal billing with the men's.
Twenty years ago I spent quite a lot of my time by or on the river, usually in the company of eight other people. This weekend I will be back there, with seven out of the eight people and with the other joining by Skype from New Zealand. In that 20 year period the nine of us (eight rowers and a cox in case anyone is confused) have become 33 (with the addition of seven husbands, 15 children and a dog). We have been to each others’ weddings and birthdays and (almost!) annual reunions. We can still just about remember the songs we sang together to inspire and encourage ourselves and the hours (and hours and hours) we spent on the river together or in the gym on the horrible rowing machines.
This year the world’s attention will be on the nine rowers from Oxford and Cambridge who are following in our blade puddles because, as you may have noticed, the Oxford vs Cambridge Boat Race has gone female - or slightly more accurately the women are, for the first ever time, racing on the same course and on the same day as the men.
This historic change is being hailed as a step forward for sporting equality and it probably is - getting equal funding into the men’s and women’s boat clubs is a big deal and the BBC coverage of both races will, I hope, do much for the sport of women's rowing and the profile of women’s sport more generally. Equality for women is something which I feel strongly about and is one of the reasons why I and the Alliance are supporting the Inspiring Women campaign and aiming to promote the fantastic range of roles and opportunities that exist for women in the world of sport.
But part of me wants to ensure that the new found fame of the women’s Boat Race doesn’t come at the expense of a different sense of equality.
Twenty years ago when the profile of the races was very different there was, and I think still is, something slightly magical about people with no rowing skill or heritage having the opportunity to train and experience something like rowing in the Boat Race. Many of my crew - including me – had never rowed before we arrived at Oxford. Indeed I still remember the day I stood in the entrance to my college looking at the flyer on the notice board about trials for the university squad and almost decided not to go because I didn’t think I was good enough.
If I hadn’t gone I suspect my Oxford life, and indeed my whole life, might have been very different - not least because of the 20 years of friendship I’ve enjoyed with my crew or because several years later I literally bumped into the man who became my husband whilst carrying a boat on a towpath. The changes we welcome this year will inevitably and happily give the women’s race more profile. But I hope it won’t mean that the crews of the future will be full of experienced post-graduate rowers coming to study mainly to compete in a high profile Boat Race and an end to a pathway which attracts new rowers and offers opportunities which shape the rest of their life.
The crew of 1995 has sent a good luck card to the crew of 2015. Of course we want them to row fast and well but perhaps the most important message we want to share with them is that we hope that their Boat Race experience is still going strong in 2035 like ours is now. And of course come on the Dark Blues!
