Musings From Oxfordshire and Beyond: Torpids

I’ve fallen behind on my posts again so this one is longer than usual. An update on the varsity water polo match against Cambridge will follow soon but right now it’s all about the epic Torpids Regatta!! This is the annual winter bumps race between all the Oxford college boat clubs and it's a saga full of ejector crabs, thundering cannons, combative hobos and violent collisions.

So bear with me a bit as we take a historic detour to provide a bit of context. The section of the Themes River where Oxford is situated is called the Isis. It follows a narrow, twisting course through the outlying fields and isn’t wide enough for head-to-head boat races, as the Oxford rowers discovered in 1815 when they, for reasons that evade my understanding, decided to put eight men in a cramped boat and see who could go fastest. As if polo and cricket weren’t sufficiently absurd. So they invented something called bumps racing and Cambridge followed suit ten years later. Two hundred years later Oxbridge are still doing it although almost no one else in the world has seen fit to follow suit.

View of bumps racing from St. John's boat house

The rules of bumps racing are convoluted and arcane, as only a true Englishman could devise, but hold onto your seats because I’m going to try to make it intelligible:

The regattas are split into divisions of twelve boats. Boat positions on the first day of racing are based on the finishing order on the last day of the previous year’s regatta.
Each day the divisions race in reverse order. A crew finishing at the top of a division race goes on to compete in the next-higher division later that day (starting last). This is called the sandwich boat and allows crews to move between divisions.
For each race the boats line up end to end with about one and a half boat lengths in between. (See the map below- at the start the boats are lined up from "Bumps Start" to the Isis Tavern.) When the canon goes off everyone starts and the objective is to bump the boat ahead of you without getting bumped yourself.
Once you bump, that is considered a victory and you pull over. The other boat has to keep racing. If they bump the boat ahead of them, they retain their ranking and the boat that bumped them leapfrogs forward two positions in the rankings. (As you can infer, it is difficult to move up more than four to five spots over the course of a single regatta so it takes crews years to work their way up through the divisions. However, boats can fall much more quickly. If they crash into the bank, break an oar, or catch a crab, they may be passed by every other boat in the division and hence can fall as many as twelve places in a single race.)
The main objective is to finish the regatta at the top of the first division (this is called Head of the River) but this is only realistically possible for boats in the first five spots of Division I.
For all the other boats, the objective is to bump the boat ahead of them on each of the four days. This is called winning “blades” because crews traditionally order a full sized wooden oar with the college crest and names of all the crew painted on the blade.
Winning blades also requires a certain amount of luck because it is not uncommon for a race to be klaxoned (aborted) if there is a swan in the river, a major crash or a rower falls into the water.

Yes, those rules were admittedly boring. For comic relief, watch below to find out how a rower can end up in the water (pay attention to the rowers wearing black and blue at about the 10 second mark):

Okay, so on to the action. St. John’s Women’s First Boat had a very good showing last year and won blades in both Torpids and Summer Eights. We started Torpids this year as the fourth boat in Division II. The race course is about 1.5K and usually takes approximately 5 minutes from end to end depending on where you are in the start order:

Map of the Isis- Note the locations of the Bumps Start, Donnington (Donny) Bridge, the Gut and Boathouse Island

Wednesday began with the customary English rain and an inordinate amount of wind. But we put on our game faces, donned our ridiculous lycra racing onesies and paddled up to the start line. Nerves set in as the bank attendant used a pole to maneuver us into position. But then “BOOM!” the cannon was off and there was no time to think of anything besides the boat. Three short winds, seven strokes to lengthen. “Half a boat length!! You're gaining on them!” yelled the cox! “Backs in!” By then the strokes had reached their full length, and the blades were churning through the water at about 38 strokes a minute as we flew back and forth along the slide. We continued to surge forward for another handful of strokes and then a jolt rippled up the boat as we collided with Osler House. It took maybe 30 seconds. We didn't even make it to Donny Bridge. The race was over before it had even really begun, which was a bit of an anticlimactic beginning to my bumps racing career. But I LIKED the thrill of the chase and LOVED the sensation of a bump.

On Thursday we were chasing Queens. We catapulted off the line much as before but Queens was a lively crew. Three winds. Seven lengthens. Backs in! We were waiting for the call to settle so we could slow the rate from rate 38 to a steadier more sustainable 32-34. But it didn’t come. “You’re three-quarters of a length” yelled the cox. “Power ten!!” Everyone increased the intensity a notch and exploded off the foot plates using their legs to drive the boat forward. With every stroke we gained a foot. “…Power Nine, …Power Ten.” As we cruised into the Gut (winding section of the river) the count wound down and the cox called the settle. But at that very moment the coach started shouting for us to push. “You’ve got canvas!!” (meaning the boats are overlapping.) The boat jolted from side to side as our cadence went off. Thud! We hit Queens just as our rhythm totally fell apart. Less than two minutes had elapsed and we had barely rowed a third of the course.

See a video of the race below. We are the third boat around the bend (at 0:45), bump at 1:40. I sit fourth from the bow.

Friday we began in second place and were challenging Balliol for head of the division and the right to try to break into Division I. Our strategy was simple. Keep hurtling off the line and bumping early. But we had an extra incentive knowing that if we won we would need to turn around and race again almost immediately. Balliol was a strong crew who had just been nudged out of Division I and was looking for revenge. The race went much like Wednesday. We came off the line, closed the gap early and were nipping at Balliol’s heels heading into the Gut. As we pulled alongside Balliol was reluctant to concede. We rammed into them and pulled over, relieved that we had barely winded ourselves and would still be fresh for our attempt at Division I. Meanwhile Balliol, lost their heads for a moment. Suddenly their stroke seat caught a grab and her blade flew out of her hands and snapped against the side of the boat where it stuck stubbornly as the rower desperately tried to regain the handle. Their boat veered off course and lost power as crew after crew surged past them. It was a sobering reminder of how quickly a small mishap could send a boat plummeting down in the rankings.

The Balliol cox looks quite nervous

Another video of the race. This time we are the second boat around the bend (at 0:40), bump at approximately 1:40

After a quick paddle down the rest of the course, we spun, docked briefly and then headed back to the start line to try to earn a permanent spot in Division I. We were a bit over-eager and ended up at the start line with fifteen minutes to spare, only to have the race delayed when a drunk hobo on the river bank began swinging a stick at pedestrians and the police had to be summoned. I guess rowing attracts all manner of fans. Finally the five-minute gun sounded and the jocularity from our early bump subsided as we focused on the task ahead. Once again we rocketed off the line. It wasn’t pretty rowing, but it was powerful. The cox immediately called for a power ten and we quickly closed the gap, plowing into Exeter with enough force that our blue and white bow now has a splash of red paint to mark the occasion.

Three days, four bumps. Suddenly blades were in sight and the pressure was enormous. University, the boat ahead of us had a mixed week. They had bumped, been bumped and rowed over (raced the course without bumping or being bumped). Our coach gave a sober pep talk. We had done well thus far but this would be a tougher race. We should expect to row almost the entire 1.5K course and plan to slowly chip away over the course of several minutes. But it was not to be. In what was becoming our hallmark style, we came off the line hard and bumped within the first two minutes. University conceded quickly and set off to catch the boat ahead of them. The boat went nuts. Even I rose to the occasion and displayed the appropriate level of enthusiasm. Once all the racers had passed, we collected ourselves and paddled down the river, pumping our fists as we cruised past the dozens of St. John’s students gathered on the roof of the boat house. (In five races we hadn’t ever rowed more than a third of the course, much less made it within sights of the hundreds of fans clustered on Boathouse Island.) As we pulled up to the dock we were showered in champagne and shared a toast before getting out of the boat. Then there was the ceremonial picture in front of the boat house with the blades in the background. We grabbed hold of the cox and threw him in the river. Then for good measure I tackled a few of the girls and dragged them in as well. Did I mention that the river had ice on it a few weeks ago? Brr. But it was worth it, and now we will all have a beautiful 12-foot long blades hanging on our walls for the rest of our lives to commemorate the moment.