Boat race fiasco: Protest swim halts Varsity clash then Oxford lose oar and rower collapses

By Martha Kelner
PUBLISHED: 13:54, 7 April 2012 | UPDATED: 23:30, 7 April 2012

The Boat Race, that most quintessentially English of sporting contests, was ruined by the actions of a single protestor. Trenton Oldfield, said to be an anti-elitism campaigner, donned a wetsuit and swam across the Thames into the path of the Oxford and Cambridge crews as they battled it out at the halfway point of the four-mile course.
Oldfield, 35, was charged with a public order offence on Saturday night, Scotland Yard said
Chief umpire John Garrett, alerted to the danger by Olympic champion Sir Matthew Pinsent, who was acting as assistant umpire, raised his red flag to stop the race.
When it eventually restarted, the race became meaningless when Oxford suffered a broken oar, handing Cambridge what must have been the easiest of their 81 victories.



If a day of high farce serves any purpose, it will be to concentrate minds at LOCOG, the London Olympic organising committee, who will surely now fine-tune spectator access to open events at the Games, such as the marathons, the cycling road races and the Hyde Park triathlons and marathon swims.
A LOCOG spokesman said that a massive security presence, barriers at open events and stringent checks in and around all Olympic venues should minimise the potential for a high-profile gatecrasher like Saturday’s. But he added: ‘There is no such thing as a 100 per cent guarantee.’
While Cambridge will be happy to chalk up another victory in the 158th staging of the event, the result was rendered almost irrelevant when Alex Woods, the bow in the Oxford boat, collapsed unconscious as his team limped to the finishing line.
Paramedics and the Oxford team doctor tended to Woods, 27, in a lifeboat.
He was put on a stretcher with an oxygen mask to help him breathe and taken to Charing Cross Hospital. He was in a stable condition on Saturday night.



Oxford coach Sean Bowden said Woods had ‘pushed himself beyond his limits’ due to ‘desperation’ at only having six crew-mates after


Hanno Wienhausen’s blade broke when the two boats converged seconds after the race was restarted.
‘We’re trying to digest what has happened,’ said Cambridge president and bow David Nelson. ‘It’s shocking to hear about Alex. You never want to see anyone get hurt.’
Celebrations were muted and there was no presentation ceremony. London mayor Boris Johnson, there to award the Boat Race Trophy, was told his services were not required.
The race had effectively ended after 10 minutes and 32 seconds as the boats approached the Surrey bend, just over halfway through the Tideway course. The Oxford and Cambridge crews were almost level and heading for a thrilling climax when Oldfield was spotted swimming into the path of the boats.
Pinsent, following on a launch boat, caught sight of him first. Umpire Garrett said: ‘I was totally focused on the crews. Matthew saw something in the water and shouted, “up ahead, up ahead”. We didn’t realise it was a swimmer. He swam right into where the crews were, so we had to stop.’



After Oldfield had been removed from the water and despatched on a police boat, Garrett spoke to the crews. The race was restarted, but further back than where the protest had occurred. This was to the audible displeasure of Zoe de Toledo, the Oxford cox and only female in the race, who felt this handed an unfair advantage to Cambridge.
Seconds after the restart, as they rowed past St Paul’s School — where De Toledo studied — on the stretch of water where she learnt to cox, the Oxford boat veered from the Middlesex to the Surrey side, closer to the light blue crew than they should have been despite repeated warnings from Garrett.
When the boats came together, the oar of Wienhausen, 29 and a German international, was broken in half. De Toledo appealed for a rerun, but Garrett said he saw no grounds for one, given that the collision had been caused by Oxford.
Mayor Johnson, an Oxford University old boy, said: ‘It was bloody stupid, Oxford were definitely going to win. I think they did very well to avoid the fellow in the water, though. He’s lucky to be alive.’
Oxford president Karl Hudspith posted a damning Twitter message for Oldfield, who was later arrested on suspicion of a public order
offence. ‘My team went through seven months of hell, this was the culmination of our careers and you took it from us,’ he tweeted.


The crews begin preparations for the race before the academic year begins in September, and get up at 6am, six days a week for practice.
‘It was a very British thing,’ said Pinsent. ‘This swimmer stops a British institution and we’re responsible for rescuing him.’


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