Duncan Clegg
City financier who twice won the Boat Race with Oxford and went on to run the event for 20 years
DUNCAN CLEGG, who has died aged 80, was a City financier who served for many years as the organising official of the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
Held annually since 1856 (except in wartime and during Covid) on a 4.2-mile Thames course from Putney to Mortlake, the Boat Race is a highlight of the British spring sporting calendar. A double Oxford Blue himself, Clegg became the race’s “London representative” – and chairman of the related trading company – in 1984, taking responsibility for liaison with the river authorities, police and riverside London boroughs, for sponsorship, and for safety and fair play.
His tenure began inauspiciously when the 1984 Cambridge boat collided with a barge and sank before the race began; a replacement boat was borrowed and the race went ahead the following day, for an Oxford win. Then, in 1987 he had to contend with a “mutiny” when a group of American oarsmen were dropped by Oxford at the last moment after clashing with the coach Dan Topolski over training. Clegg’s diplomacy and mastery of rules ensured that the race went ahead – Oxford snatching unexpected victory in choppy waters with six replacement rowers drawn from its reserve crew.
Finance was also a thorny issue. By the time Clegg retired in 2004, the race was attracting £500,000 in broadcasting rights with another £1million in sponsorship – and requiring a delicate balance between commercial pragmatism and its amateur ethos. Crews were permitted to wear sponsors’ branded vests as they carried their boats down to the water, for example, but not for the race itself.
“One of the great appeals of our event is that it is Corinthian,” said Clegg. “It’s about nine young blokes who are competing for their university for the love of their sport, nothing else.”
Robert Duncan Clegg was born at Richmond upon Thames on April 12 1942, the son of Alexander Clegg, a London Transport official, and his wife Hilda, née Duncan. Educated at Tiffin School in Kingston, Clegg went on to St Edmund Hall, Oxford, to read English Literature, with a particular interest in Anglo-saxon and early English.
He rowed for the university in the Isis (reserve) boat in 1964 and at No 3 in the winning 1965 Blue boat – which recorded what was then the third fastest time in Boat Race history. He returned for a second victory in 1966, by three and three-quarter lengths, when he was club president.
At the ball that followed the 1966 race, he met his future wife Jennie Luxton, niece of the Australian oarsman Lewis Luxton, who had stroked the Cambridge team in 1932 and competed for Great Britain in that year’s Olympics. After graduating, Clegg followed Jennie back to Melbourne, where they were married in 1968. He studied for an MBA, rowed for Monash University and embarked on a career in corporate finance – latterly for Capel Court Corporation, in which the London merchant bank Samuel Montagu was a shareholder.
In 1972 he returned to join Montagu in London and in 1976 he moved to Lazard Brothers, where he built a reputation as a courteous and thoughtful financier, protective of his clients and meticulous in executing complex transactions on their behalf. Promoted to director in 1984, he led the flotation of TSB in 1986 and later specialised in privatisations of water and electricity companies. He retired from Lazards at the end of 1993 to become, among numerous boardroom roles, chairman of the textile maker Low & Bonar, a director of Scottish Equitable and deputy chairman of the Port of London Authority.
In later years he maintained involvements in many aspects of British rowing. He was a Steward of Henley Royal Regatta and member of its Finance Committee, and chairman from 2004 to 2012 of Dorney Lake Trust which administers the world-class rowing lake built by Eton College that became – after a tenacious financial negotiation by Clegg – a memorable venue for the 2012 London Olympics.
He was also Master in 2010-11 of the Company of Waterman and Lightermen of the River Thames – presiding with aplomb over Doggett’s Coat and Badge, the world’s oldest rowing race dating from 1715, in which competitors (originally apprentice watermen) complete an upstream course from London Bridge to Chelsea.
He was high sheriff of Gloucestershire in 2012-13.
Duncan Clegg is survived by Jennie and their four sons, all of whom rowed competitively. The eldest, Robert, rowed for Oxford in three Boat Races in the mid-1990s as well as for Great Britain, and was OU Boat Club president in 1996, 30 years after his father.