TURNING THE TIDEWAY

We meet Richard Hull (Oriel, 1986), CEO and Performance Director of Oxford University Boat Club (OUBC), and Lexi Underwood (Pembroke, 2022), who rowed in the 2024 Boat Race and will hopefully do so again on Saturday 4 April – Easter Saturday, the date of the 2026 Boat Race.

We’re all standing on the balcony of the Thames Rowing Club on a cold but bright, sunny day immediately after the presentations that followed Trial VIIIs, the one time in a Boat Race season when all the squads get to race each other on the entire, unforgiving Tideway course from Putney to Chiswick.

The day before it had rained without cease, no fun for the light blues, but for Oxford the sun shone, and Lexi was in the winning boat, the seventh seat in Iceman (after the film Top Gun), winning by seven lengths over Maverick. Could this be a sign that things are going to go Oxford’s way in 2026? It’s certainly a sign that things are going well for Lexi.

The men haven’t won since 2022 so they’re hungry for victory. Richard, who is at pains not to tempt fate, says that absolutely Oxford can win, and not just in the sense that Cambridge could lose, this being a one-on-one duel, a match race. ‘I think the spirit within the club, I think the approach to the athletes and the culture that's being developed are really, really strong. That's it.’

What’s different about elite rowing in 2026 compared to when Richard rowed for Oxford in 1987, 1988 and 1990? 

NUTRITION

I want to know if the 1980s was all about raw steaks at breakfast. It was not, says Richard, but a theme that echoes across the generation of difference between the two rowers is simply the difficulty of obtaining enough of the right calories for the training involved, in light of the pressure of time generated by studying for a degree at Oxford at the same time that you’re trying to become a top-level elite rower.

Lexi says that on a normal day he’ll be up at 5.15am, and on the minibus that takes the squad out to the OUBC boat house at Wallingford, he’ll tuck into oats prepped the night before. On the return, it might be a wrap with eggs inside it or a bottle of chocolate protein milk, which he says is new since the 1980s and which is a fast way to get replenished. Then lectures. Then a plate of rice, some curry, study some more, another snack, train again, a ‘big dinner, perhaps in college', and maybe another snack before bed. Prep the oats for the next day.

In some ways it is relentless, in other ways it’s peak everything (brilliant) and expensive too (less brilliant), particularly, says Lexi, if he goes out to save a bit of time, occasionally admitting to raiding the McCoy’s kebab van outside Pembroke, which he thinks the college authorities might not be especially keen about but tolerate as part of the backdrop of what makes Oxford. This leads to an impromptu discussion about Oxford’s several kebab pitches, clearly a subject near and dear to hand.

Richard remembers the carbs and plentiful toast eating, but he says they were thoughtful about protein too. It wasn’t the dark ages and he recalls no steaks for breakfast (‘but I might have been tempted’).

TECHNOLOGY

As we continue to talk, it appears that technology is where the biggest revolution has taken place, not nutrition.

Richard says that the ergs his generation used were slightly different, ‘but the Concept II appeared very shortly after and has stayed much the same in its physical layout, really since around 1990.’

The real differences are wrapped up in the collective term telemetry, and it affects the actual boat and how it is set up. Lexi says: ‘It’s a system that is rigged up through the boat: basically you've got a force gauge on all of the rowers' gates. And it basically measures the power each rower puts into the water but also much more, how you move, move through the boat, and what the speed of the blade is doing, its angle at different times during the stroke.’

This means that you can’t hide, and every individual performance can be scrutinised. But it’s more than that. The coach now has a vast amount of data to generate a sensitive, composite picture of what precisely is going on in the boat.

WEATHER

Another difference, says Richard, is that if there’s lightning this year, as there was in 1987 when he rowed (see below, the infamous 'Mutiny crew') most probably the race will be briefly delayed because it’s a clear danger to the rowers. On the other hand, Lexi qualifies, ‘Mark's [Mark Fangen-Hall, the men’s head coach] favourite saying is that the race will only be cancelled if it's a danger to the spectators watching, and that we [the rowers] are sent out to provide the entertainment. So that ethos of getting on with it, that hasn’t budged much. I suppose it's one of the abiding fascinations of the race – that a windy, tidal setting isn’t ideal for these sorts of boats, that rough weather could cause them to actually sink.’

Both crews sank in 1912 amidst a storm, but the race was simply rescheduled for the next day. There are at least half a dozen other occasions when boats took on too much water or actually caused the crew to practise their swimming technique.

‘This race that I am so deeply attached to, it really is unique,’ says Richard. ‘You've got a tide and it’s a windy course. There're no markers, no buoys, no other channels or course markers. You row in any conditions. And then, it's... it's a match race. It's a binary outcome, win or lose. In every sense it’s a 20-minute sprint, because you have to go hard off the line, and you have to keep going, and at the end of the day, evenly matched crews, they're rowing down the middle of the course, utterly fatigued. Yeah, that's a pretty unique rowing experience. Peculiarly British, somehow, I think.’

THE 2026 RACE DRAWS NEAR

Lexi says that following the Christmas break, which brings protein and rest every season, at the perfect moment, there is immediately a ten-day training camp in Spain just ahead of Hilary term [Cambridge will be doing the same]. Then it’s back to the lectures and the early starts and the training in all weathers and the hope that you don’t get sick or injured.

‘Along the way we have a series of fixtures racing boats stacked with top talent – I am particularly looking forward to the Leander fixture [a rowing club in Henley, and one of the top rowing programmes in the country as well, nurturing Olympians].’ It’s not unusual for Oxford to lose, and it’s the right way to bring the squad up to the level required for the big day in April.

Richard chips in that when he rowed against Leander, he was rowing against Steve Redgrave, the five gold Olympic medal-winning legend of late 20th-century British rowing.

Then on 12 March there will be a crew announcement, which, whilst it is intended to be final doesn’t discount last minute changes because of illness and injury. Lexi says, ‘by then we are all paranoid about sniffles and coughs...’

‘But,’ says Richard, ‘you still have to attend your lectures and study...’

Lexi: ‘…you haven't made the boat until you're sat on the start line and the flag goes down.’