Why? I spent my thirties and forties overseas; not distantly – Germany, from where Oxbridge rowers hail from time to time. Being away for so long from England – and Oxford – somehow sharpened my focus on those very English spring-to-summer pastimes: Test cricket, Wimbledon, the Boat Race. I’ve rarely missed the latter, on TV, since my mid-thirties.

So when, for a modest sum, a chance came from Christ Church to be Thameside on this year’s Palm Sunday, I jumped at it. I found myself a short while before the women’s race outside Ravenscourt Park Tube looking at a tall man’s chest and asked, “Christ Church?” The crest on his white blazer was unmistakable. We walked together to Linden House, a little upriver from Hammersmith Bridge, in promising sun; he’d done a Masters and was, well, German.

A glass of fizz on entry awaited, then another… A pay bar upstairs heaved but that’s in the spirit of the afternoon. Downstairs, Christ Church had convivial solo-occupancy and a delicious buffet lunch was provided in one room. In another, white-clothed tables spread out in front of a screen that showed all the action live.

Outside, I stood amid cheering crowds lining a wall between our venue and the River as the women flew past. For the men, I wanted to be higher up, so leant out of the bar window as they approached and thought, “The Boat Race has never been so much fun”.

We know the 2025 results. Beneath some gloom in Linden House, I couldn’t help but feel a certain neutrality. After Germany, I worked in various capacities for Cambridge University – and even wrote there about rowing! Now I’ve seen in person both crews’ blistering athleticism, I don’t think I can watch the Race again in any other way.

James Woodall

The writer, who read English at the House, is working on a biography of Jorge Luis Borges.