The Boat Race is an annual rowing race between the Oxford University Boat Club and the Cambridge University Boat Club, rowed between competing eights on the River Thames in London, England. It is also known as the University Boat Race and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race, from 2010–2012 for sponsorship reasons as the Xchanging Boat Race, and from 2013 as the BNY Mellon Boat Race. It usually takes place on the last Saturday of March or the first Saturday of April.
The first race was in 1829 and the event has been held annually since 1856, except during World War I and World War II. The course covers a 4.2 mile (6.8 km) stretch of the Thames in West London, from Putney to Mortlake. Members of both teams are traditionally known as blues and each boat as a "Blue Boat", with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford dark blue. As of 2012 Cambridge have won the race 81 times and Oxford 76 times, with one dead heat.
The race is a well-established and popular fixture in the British sporting calendar. In 2010 an estimated quarter of a million people watched the race live from the banks of the river and millions on television.
Read more about The Boat Race: Course, Media Coverage, Competitors, Sponsorship, Other Boat Races Involving Oxford and Cambridge, Build-up, Popular Culture, Results and Statistics
Famous quotes containing the words boat and/or race:
“The water which supports a boat can also sink it.”
—Chinese proverb.
“For it is the nature and end of this relation, that they should represent the human race to each other. All that is in the world, which is or ought to be known, is cunningly wrought into the texture of man, of woman.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)