THE BOAT RACE IS ON FOR 2025

Somerset House overlooking the River Thames at Waterloo Bridge was the setting for the President’s Challenge, when the losing boat race captains respectively of the women’s and men’s crews challenge their counterpart to a new race – in this case the 2025 CHANEL J12 Boat Race, the date set for Sunday April 13.

The Portico Rooms were filled with past and present crew members, officials, umpires and sponsors, and the ceremony was hosted by Olympic champion and four-time boat race winner Constantine Louloudis, MBE.

For the first time ever a woman will umpire the men’s race in 2025, Sarah Winckless MBE, while Oxford alum Sir Matthew Pinsent will umpire the women’s race.

In the formal part of the ceremony Oxford Presidents Tom Mackintosh and Annie Anezakis challenged Cambridge Presidents Luca Ferraro and Lucy Harvard to a new contest (Above, and Left). This involves them ‘facing off’ but also shaking hands – and in effect fires a long range starting gun on the new event, with the crucial shakedown club trials for both squads taking place on the Championship Course in mid-December, barely a month away, followed by crew announcements in late March.

Meanwhile Boat Race Company Chair Siobhan Cassidy (pictured, right) introduced new title sponsor Chanel, saying that this was the luxury label’s first sporting sponsorship and that boathouses and rowing machines came together with luxury in regard of ‘excellence, performance and teamwork.’

The partnership with Chanel was first announced in October.

Cassidy explained that there are a series of forthcoming landmark anniversaries that will propel the next few boat races to new heights – first the centenary of Chanel in the UK in 2026, Gabrielle Chanel having redefined women’s sportswear during the 1920s.

Next, 2027 will see the centenary of the women’s boat race, while 2029 will mark two hundred years since the men’s race began.

Cassidy also noted how the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race has now become one of the world’s oldest and most loved amateur sporting events. At the 2024 event, which both Oxford crews lost to Cambridge, there were estimated to have been 200,000 bankside spectators, plus a domestic UK TV audience of 4-5 million, and a still larger global audience.

In the 2024 event, Cambridge beat the Oxford men by 3 1/2 lengths in a time of 18m 56s in a tense encounter that kept Umpire Matthew Pinsent busy in the early stages, while the Cambridge women retained their title as winners of the Women’s Boat Race for the seventh consecutive year, 7 lengths ahead of rivals Oxford.

As things stand in the overall rankings, Cambridge is ahead 87-81 in the Men’s Race and 48-30 in the Women’s.