I can announce that spring has sprung – not by trying exterior and seeing the climate (it’s nonetheless not nice…) however as a result of it’s Boat Race day!
Yep, for me, and I think about many others, this race marks the tip of winter in a method that Punxsutawney Phil can solely dream of.
This 12 months Oxford are favourites for the boys’s race and boy do they should win. Cambridge took a clear sweep final 12 months, profitable every of the 4 races (males’s, girls’s, males’s reserves and ladies’s reserves). It was solely the fourth time that one college has received all 4 races within the half-century that the 4 races have been staged.
Within the historical past of the boys’s Boat Race, Cambridge lead Oxford by 86 wins to 81 (there was a lifeless warmth in 1877). Cambridge are much more dominant within the historical past of the ladies’s race, with 47 victories to Oxford’s 30.
Whoever wins, nevertheless, they should be cautious of over-celebrating. Ranges of E. coli have been discovered to be as much as 10 instances increased than what the Surroundings Company considers acceptable for the worst bathing waters graded poor on a stretch of the river that will likely be used for this Saturday’s occasion.
As such, each crews have been warned to not enter the water and to scrub themselves down on the end line.
Steerage issued suggests rowers cowl cuts, grazes and blisters with waterproof dressings and take care to not swallow any river water to keep away from getting ailing.
Final 12 months, British Rowing, the game’s nationwide governing physique, mentioned it had obtained an elevated variety of studies of diseases amongst rowers.
Most sorts of E.coli are innocent or trigger comparatively temporary diarrhoea.
However a couple of strains, similar to E.coli O157:H7, may cause extreme abdomen cramps, bloody diarrhoea and vomiting.
So there you’ve got it, go for the win however keep out of the water, in as a lot as a ship crew can…
Keep right here for all of the motion on the Thames.
