Ten years since their last win on the Championship Course there were hoots and cheers of relief and delight as Oxford brought an end to a bruising Boat Race drought. Cambridge had won the last eight editions; president Gemma King, by far the most experienced rower of either side, had won five of her six races on this course.
The Dark Blues faced a forbidding task but even throughout the years of those chastening defeats they were beginning to rebuild. And there was even more on the line this year: for Annie Anezakis, this was her last chance before graduating from her medicine postgrad, after being on the losing side on three occasions. For Olympic bronze medallist and president Heidi Long, this was a last shot at another lifelong dream before completing her master’s in September, powered by the grief of losing her father Keith – an endless champion of her rowing career – to pancreatic cancer in 2023.
