Tiger Roll and the Boat Race make us feel a little inadequate

The chief drawback to watching the Boat Race every year is that it can leave you feeling a touch inadequate, the competing crews not only highly gifted in the sporting department but also academically quite useful too.

Like, say, Cambridge’s Ida Gortz Jacobsen who is doing an MPhil in European, Latin American and Comparative Literatures and Cultures, or Oxford’s Isobel Dodds who is in the middle of a DPhil in Interdisciplinary Bioscience. All the Googling in the world wouldn’t help understand what that even is.

But then you learn that some of them have even more strings to their bows. Cambridge’s Pippa Whittaker, for example, can solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than a minute, Andrew Cotter told us. And her fellow Light Blue Matthew Holland, who is reading Natural Sciences, is a top class countertenor who “sang at Stephen Hawking’s funeral”, Clare Balding revealed. These were very random but nonetheless impressive bits of info.

“They could solve all the problems in the world,” Clare said of all that brainpower, but she wondered how on earth they all found the time to squeeze so much activity in their lives. Lizzie Polgreen explained that rowing actually helps her with her DPhil in Computer Science work at Oxford, bringing some balance to her life, Lizzie’s contribution to the Boat Race through the years quite balanced too, having rowed for Cambridge in the 2011 race.

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Too refined

In that sense, Lizzie is the Mo Johnston or Sol Campbell of rowing, although mercifully there were no cries of ‘Juuuuuuudas!’ from Hammersmith Bridge as she passed through, rowing being too refined for that class of boorishness. Well, refined apart from that moment the BBC had to leap on the volume button for Oxford cox Eleanor Shearer’s mic as she urged her crew to get a “****ing” move on.

Alas for Eleanor, her crew didn’t respond, indeed if Cambridge had kept rowing until Oxford reached the finishing line they’d have ended up in Calais.

It didn’t prove quite as easy for the Cambridge boys, but they won all the same, the conditions chilly but grand. Ahead of the race, weather presenter Carol Kirkwood was, for no evident reason, put standing in waders in the Thames.

“What is the temperature of the water,” asked Clare.

“Cold,” Carol replied.

The big story, of course, was that 46-year-old James Cracknell, the oldest person to ever compete in the Boat Race, had added another gong to a collection that already includes two Olympic and six World Championship gold medals.

He had signed up to study in Cambridge last year for an MPhil in Human Evolutionary Studies, bringing a whole new meaning to ‘mature student’, Clare wondering if he would be used as a case study in his course considering there’s no end to his sporting evolution.

“He’s 46, not 96,” his friend Ben Fogle protested, like James was being researched by the Fossil Studies people, but all concerned agreed that he was an extraordinary specimen. Perhaps not as extraordinary as his boat-mate Dave Bell, mind, Bell revealing that he has “legs are bigger than most horses”.

But he only has two, unlike Tiger Roll, although the latter’s past two Grand National performances suggest he might possibly possess eight.

“What’s he like as a person,” ITV’s Francesca Cumani asked triumphant trainer Gordon Elliott. “He’s a little like myself – he likes the good life, he eats, drinks and sleeps, so he does, he keeps it very simple,” he said.

Winning jockey Davy Russell, meanwhile, revealed that his father had only booked his flight for Aintree on Wednesday morning, “he paid a whole lot of money for it,” he said. “Not enough,” Michael O’Leary replied, although seeing as Davy’s Da got there in time, Tony McCoy assumed he hadn’t flown Ryanair.

Any way, it was a jubilant group, all doffing their caps to the wonder horse. So wondrous, in fact, you wouldn’t be surprised if he could complete a DPhil in Interdisciplinary Bioscience and solve a Rubik’s Cube in less than a minute. The eight hooves would help, though.