Awesome sporting prowess, determination and courage on display at the Boat Race today in horrendous conditions. In particular the Cambridge Women being up to their oxters in water but declining to be rescued and rowing the last 1000m in a cause that was as lost as lost can be
But wtf were the BBC doing with Helen Skelton and some half-wit comedian doing some riverside coverage? Is this some recent BBC charter that says any display of excellence has to be reduced to a nadir of inanity? I wonder if, after the 100m final in Rio they’ll cut to some dumb & dumber duo saying “I don’t know anything about running. But I like his shorts. And look, they’ve got metal spiky things sticking out of their shoes” Why oh why BBC etc etc
Why indeed. It explains why they employ the half-witted, and unpleasant, Robbie Savage as a football pundit and allow him to turn a football talk in show into a programme highlighting his witless opinions and his unpleasantness when the odd caller should dare to voice an opinion contrary to his own. Don’t get me started on Kevin Kilbane, the king of the bleeding obvious.
No less odd, I thought, was that the Boat Race was lead sports story this afternoon on the BBC Asian Network, notwithstanding that India were at that every moment playing Australia for a place in the semi-final of the Cricket T20 World Cup.
And, gloriously, thrashed them
I have no idea why the boat race is even on the tv. Elitist tosh if you ask me.
I assumed that the BBC had finally (and as far as I’m concerned, correctly) decided to treat it as the sporting equivalent to the Eurovision Song Contest. The main thing I’m impressed with is that even after all these years, the same two teams get through to the final every time.
Two teams of immensely privileged Little Lord Fauntleroys, who’ve never had to work a day in their lives, recreating ancient rivalries for braying hordes who think England’s still a great world power. But we won 3-2 so it was worth every penny
Helen Skelton: nice legs, shame about the boat race..
controversial but undeniably mirthsome SR!
I’m surprised that the BBC continue to cover this event. Nobody other than the participants care about the outcome. Let the highest bidder (Sky, Amazon…) bid for it. What do you mean they’re not interested? It’s a tradition!
Probably costs relatively little to broadcast, and showing it means they don’t get a kicking from the tabloids – ‘BBC poshoes axe our boat race’. However, if the Boat Race was part of a series between UK universities, or went to foreign rivers and included foreign teams, it would long ago have been bought up by Sky.
I’ll watch when someone other than Oxford or Cambridge makes it to the final…
Yes, clearly the whole thing is a load of old rowlocks.
Boats full of posho economic migrants.
Coming over ‘ere doing our boys out of their rightful entitlement to row up and down our noble English rivers whenever they get a yen to do so.
Thin end of the wedge.
They come oar’v’ere…
I love the boat race ( there, I said it).
Even with all the legitimate reasons to despise it as an event for an extremely unrepresentative slice of society as an endeavour it is awesome.
Rowing is a very odd masochistic pursuit but having giving it a bash at a very basic kevel
I find hard it hard to express just how amazing those Varsity knobs are in this weird event.
It’s more than twice as long a a standard Olympic event over sometimes unmanageable ‘terrain’ – not a smooth purpose built lake – & the velocity they move at is incredible.
I used to be a keen cyclist & reckon I could have kept up with a pro peloton for for a few miles, but in rowing terms the boat race types would be out of sight in less than a minute.
Imagining a 1500 metre running race that was sprinted for the duration is the closest analogy I van think of.
Strip away all the guff & the boat race is still one of the world’s amazing athletic events.
Top post, and a mighty fine riposte to the “One cox? They’re all cocks!” school of thought..
Insert “the cox likes my stroking” gag here
Princess Anne kissed the cox of the winning crew.
Ta, SW
Apologies for huge over use of the word ‘event’, BTW.
Well said, Jim.
As regards the BBC coverage, I didn’t watch it, as I don’t watch much television, and I’m not a fan of the current BBC and whose coverage of these type of events is increasingly juvenile and asinine, and whose news is so obviously not impartial that it’s on a par with Channel Four.
As for the race , I’m not someone who takes much of an interest, but in itself I think it is a good thing. It’s a tradition and part of our multifarious collective folk culture. Start hacking away it for motives that are based on political persuasion is not a good thing, and will inevitably bring us all closer to the mass socio-cultural homogeneous and generic blandness that is the ideal of the neo con global free marketeers and their corporate buddies.
Right. Time for some crumpets, tea and breakfast Prog.
AUM
Namu amida butsu to you, Rob.
I should clarify that I have no stake whatsover in who wins the darn thing & could write a long & no doubt tedious missive on its’ faults as a signifier of inherent patriarchal hegemony or whatever but in essence it’s mental in a GOOD way.
Those loons train with 5 am starts in godawful weather for 9 months for a 20 minute all or nothing tilt at immortality – AND they are obliged to wear pale blue hunter wellies. Yikes!
Now off to do my measly 3 mile huff & puff whilst listening to a sweary podcast.
Excelsior!
You must’ve been some cyclist. Mark Cavendish says that a Cat 1 amateur wouldn’t even survive the neutralised zone of a pro stage.
I’d make no claim beyond ‘ a few miles’ – nowhere near a stage or anything like that.
Of course in my day ( goes into pipe & slippers mode) they were simpler times: EPO, huge caffeine suppositories & a hypo jab in the bum & you were good to fly up Ditchling Beacon!
Kids today, don’t know they’re born…
Ha! No marginal gains in them days.
All joshing aside, Marco Pantani (alongside Claudio Chiapucci)
was my cycling hero & his destruction by drugs is genuinely heartbreaking.
The sport was so riddled with dope in the 90s that even his death didn’t prompt it to clean up its act.
It’s that aspect of things that highlight what a despicable c*nt Lance Armstrong turned out to be. Not content to dope himself, he coerced others into it too.
Yeah, it’s pretty horrible, seedy stuff. From reading about Pantani – and seeing the film – it appears to me that he was a sensitive, naive man, and that the doping tore him up inside.
Om Maheshwaraya Namaha
Yes, it’s mentalness is indeed inherent, and also beautifully transcendent. The boat race is a fine example of Lila. The mundanity of transient concepts forms a necessary opacity in this regard, but wisely discard these trivialities and one can join in the dance, joyously. Rigidly uphold these trivialities with an unyiedling dogmatism worthy of a Lutherian pulpit gnaher, devout Marxist or pious Dawkinite, and then the veil is drawn once more and experience remains constipated in a self inflicted drear drab hohumdum.
I’m off for a soothing bath and free jazz.
Tat Tvam Asi !
‘its’ – oh for an edit facility !
‘pulpit gnasher’ !
I’m pleased they’re trying to make it more accessible. Hopefully the increased coverages will get kids off their Xboxes and down to their local regatta.