Sports
Chiswick has a number of local rugby union teams including, Chiswick RFC, formerly Old Meadonians RFC. They currently play in London 2 North West (Level seven), six leagues below the Guinness Premiership. It plays on a Saturday at Dukes Meadows.
On Chiswick Common is the Rocks Lane Multi Sports Centre, where there are tennis, five-a-side football and netball courts available to hire to the public.
The Chiswick reach of the Thames is heavily used for competitive and recreational rowing, and Chiswick itself is home to several clubs. The University of London Boat Club is based in its boathouse off Hartington Road (the boathouse also houses the clubs of many of the University's constituent colleges and teaching hospitals). ULBC is, periodically, one of the most successful university clubs in the UK, with multiple wins at Henley Royal Regatta. Recent members include Tim Foster, Gold medallist at the Sydney Olympics and Frances Houghton, World Champion in 2005, 2006 and 2007. Mortlake Anglian & Alpha Rowing Club and Quintin Boat Club are situated between Chiswick Quay Marina and Chiswick Bridge. The foreshore facing these clubs is also used as the landing place for Boat Race crews.
Tideway Scullers School is immediately downriver of Chiswick Bridge. The Club's current members include single sculling World Champion Mahé Drysdale and Great Britain single sculler Alan Campbell. The upriver end of the Championship Course from Mortlake to Putney is adjacent to the Tideway Scullers School boathouse. The Boat Race is contested on the Championship Course on a flood tide (in other words from Putney to Mortlake) with Duke's Meadows a popular view-point for the closing stages of the race. The finishing post is just downstream of Chiswick Bridge. Other important races such as the Head of the River Race race the reverse course, on an ebb tide.
Although the garage closed in 2000 and has now become a block of flats, Chiswick was once home to the Chequered Flag garage and its associated motor racing team. Situated on Chiswick High Road, the garage and car showroom was noted for its privateering rally team driving a Lancia Stratos with drivers such as Tony Pond and Russell Brookes. Much earlier, the team had raced Formula Junior cars, and numbered Jim Clark amongst its early drivers.
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Thy sports are fled and all thy charms withdrawn;
Amidst thy bowers the tyrant’s hand is seen,
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—Oliver Goldsmith (1730?–1774)