Female rowers battle it out at the first women’s boat race
Enthusiastic spectators line the riverbanks, but a head-to-head competition is forbidden
Amid all the dizzying novelties of the 1920s, few seemed more alarming than the advent of women rowers. Yet almost a hundred years after the young men of Oxford and Cambridge had contested the first university boat race, their female counterparts were ready to stake a claim to sporting immortality.
The first women’s boat race, contested on the Isis in Oxford, was not quite accurately named, since the two crews did not actually race each other at all. As the Manchester Guardian told its readers: “The heads of the women’s colleges had forbidden a proper race, and the contest was decided on points for style and speed, each crew rowing down stream for style and back again for speed.”
Even the sceptics, however, had to admit that it was a colourful occasion. As if determined to confirm their killjoy reputation, the heads of the women’s colleges had scheduled the race for 1.15pm, “in order to avoid a large body of spectators”. All the same, the banks were packed with “enthusiastic undergraduates, flinging confetti over the river, and blowing toy trumpets”.
Such was the excitement, in fact, that one of the two judges, cycling along the towpath alongside the boats, twice fell off his bicycle and had to pedal hard to catch up. As for the crews themselves, the Guardian thought that “the Cambridge ladies were decidedly virile”. Not only did their captain shout: “Row like hell, chaps!” but after the race “they called loudly for cigarettes”, much to the amusement of some spectators.
It did them no good, though. Victory went to the ladies of Oxford, who apparently “looked very smart in their white jerseys and dark blue shorts”.