The Day

It dawned warm and windless. By 8:30, the hot chestnut men were out. Hawkers barking blue dolls (royal blue for Oxford, light blue for Cambridge), windmills and crossed-oar badges took up stands they hadn't filled since the last Boat Race Day, seven years ago. By 11, just before high tide, when the Thames is quiet and indulgent, a half-million Londoners had lined both sides of the Thames's tow-paths as their fathers & grandfathers had before them, off & on, for 117 years. Almost everybody brought hampers of food, and some brought stepladders. It was England's first big sporting event since the war.

Everybody took sides--bartenders, bus collectors and urchins were loyal Oxonians or Cantabrigians for the day. The experts had made Cambridge's heavy crew a top-heavy favorite until Oxford's eight reached the river. The Oxonians, who averaged a puny 154 pounds a month ago (TIME, March 4), had put on 12 pounds a man on powdered eggs and porridge, and their stroke was clean and precise. By race time, the odds were even.

At the Ship, an ancient Tudor pub with sawdust on the floor, overlooking the finish line. Publican Gus Foster, an ex-lion tamer, thought some of the old boat-race flavor was missing. He remembered the time he bet his shirt against a lady's blouse--and won. "She took off her blouse right in the public bar," he said. "She was a sport, she was." For 30 years he had rented out window space on The Day, and usually quadrupled his sale of beer and short-order meals.

In Gus's once-jampacked pub sat just two tweedy Cambridge men (one without an arm), two half-pint ratings from the Submarine Service, two burly noncoms from the Grenadier Guards. A tipsy ex-Tommy wanted to bet five pounds to four on Oxford and got no takers. A radio blared. Said Gus: "The boat race, it's dying out, that's wot it is. ... Trouble is everyone goes for football matches 'n dog racing wot they can 'ave a bit of a bet on." Actually the crowds were as big as ever, and grateful for the outing, but some of the old drink-it-up spirit was gone. People generally stayed as sober as their austerity clothes.

Battle of the Blues. Off the mark, Cambridge's Light Blues had the inside position, an advantage because of two sweeping bends in the river. But Oxford's quick start and steady stroke shot the Royal Blues into an early lead, and they cut inside. The announcer said that Oxford was two lengths in front and going strong. The ex-Tommy cut his offer--a half a crown to a shilling. Still no takers. Outside, a polite British roar came from both sides of the river as Oxford came into view round the final bend.

Gus's customers moved to the newly paned windows (ten times shattered by bombs), watched Oxford sweep across the line three lengths ahead, in the passably good time of 19 mins. 54 sec. (record: 18:03). Not one of Oxford's crew showed the exhaustion that Cambridge's heavier oarsmen did. It was Oxford's 43rd win (to 48 for Cambridge).

After the race, Gus looked gloomily at the untapped kegs in his cellar. In London that night there was little of the tipsy tradition that made it a duty of The Day to knock off at least one bobby's high-domed helmet. A girl at her first boat race asked her young man: "What does one do after a boat race?" "Go home," he said.

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