The Boat Race: Oxford seek to build on success

The Race of the Century is how the dramatic 2002 university boat race has already been immortalised - and Oxford won it. That makes two victories in three years, which is great for spirit among coaching staff and returning Blues, great for the event in that neither Dark nor Light blue camp are stuck in "a losing streak" and great for historians still debating whether Oxford would have claimed that last win had the Cambridge No 4 not collapsed near the end with exhaustion.

But, for 2003, the superlative show of strength and staying power that won Oxford the last race holds little relevance. The beginning of the new academic year is a clean slate. Yes, chief coach Sean Bowden greeted three returning Blues in president Matt Smith, Robin Bourne-Taylor and Basil Dixon, and seven students who had rowed in Isis. But the magical challenge of creating the fastest eight from all the athletic specimens available has started all over again.

Bowden, in his seventh year as chief coach, gets to know his squad early on, whether they are technically strong or physically powerful, whether it is going to be a hard or an easy year. After 14 weeks of rowing and trial eights, how does he assess this campaign's squad so far? "In some ways there is an easiness about this year. When we have put certain combinations of people together, things have clicked quite well. But one definite fact is that we don't have that many options to choose from," he said, speaking in his office at the University Sports Centre gym shortly before escorting his charges to Davos, Switzerland, for a cross-country ski camp. "It will be a very competitive squad. Lots of people will be looking to make the Blue boat, but that's a reflection on the fact that there aren't a lot of really outstanding people who would automatically be in it.

"We certainly don't have a lot of large people, so it isn't the case of 'OK, these guys are really big and strong, let's teach them how to row'. We have to look at who actually can row, who is a boat mover. And because it's a crew that isn't going to have a lot of horsepower, there's a particular way that the crew is going to have to race and people have to be able to do that."

This is very different from 2002, when Oxford boasted a group of big, strong guys and the challenge was mostly about getting them to fit in and use their strength effectively. "There, you had the strength, but they could be clumsy and tended to have a potentially negative impact on the boat. This year, dealing with smaller people, you have to train them to be very productive and become more powerful. Essentially, to win you need to be able to row fast enough, and secondly to be able to row fast enough for long enough."

Oxford trial eights, held earlier this month, illustrated Bowden's task perfectly. Of the two crews, named Health and Safety, the former included the three returning Blues and the latter contained internationals Scott Frandsen, Sam McLennan, Justin Hutchinson and Matt Daggett, whose pedigree is impressive.

Frandsen, at the top United States rowing university, stroked the Cal/Berkeley varsity eight for three successive years and is in the Canadian squad on track for Athens. McLennan came through the excellent rowing school of the University of Wisconsin, Hutchinson is a renowned workhorse and Daggett rowed in the Harvard first eight in 2001 and 2002. Between them Daggett and Frandsen have won everything on both east and west coast.

On the bouncy Tideway water of an early December day, however, Health, representing Boat Race experience, beat Safety, with the superior pedigree, by a crushing 10 lengths. The winning crew had really gone on the attack and understood that the race required a short sprint to get ahead followed by a long haul to the finishing line. "The other boat, for a number of reasons, didn't take that on board," said Bowden.

Steve Royle, director of rowing, admitted the disparity was greater than expected. "We wanted to see the guys under pressure to see what happened, because that's what trial races are all about. But the losing crew seemed intimidated by the situation."

The losing crew were visibly demoralised, but that in itself might have been a necessary wake-up call to internationals used to dual racing on smooth water. Losing should motivate them to prove that they, too, can roll with every punch the Tideway throws at them.

What next in the selection process? In the winter camp in Spain early next month, the coaching team have specific things to test out. "There are people doing better than expected and people who are not doing as well as you'd expect. At this stage some people have got a big question mark against their name and some have a bit of a tick," said Bowden. While Cambridge are said to be concerned about the impressive Matt Smith/Robin Bourne-Taylor stern pairing, what are Bowden's views of the Light Blue camp?

"I guess they're a little bit ahead of us, looking at results from the Fours Head, the indoor championships and the national trials. We're not bluffing or pretending. We've seen the results and we know we're behind and we know we don't have any more aces to pull out of the sleeve . . . this is what we've got."