Cambridge thrash Oxford to assert males’s and ladies’s double | EUROtoday

I can announce that spring has sprung – not by wanting outdoors and seeing the climate (it’s nonetheless not nice…) however as a result of it’s Boat Race day!

Yep, for me, and I think about many others, this race marks the top of winter in a manner that Punxsutawney Phil can solely dream of.

This 12 months Oxford are favourites for the boys’s race and boy do they should win. Cambridge took a clear sweep final 12 months, successful every of the 4 races (males’s, girls’s, males’s reserves and ladies’s reserves). It was solely the fourth time that one college has gained all 4 races within the half-century that the 4 races have been staged.

In the historical past of the boys’s Boat Race, Cambridge lead Oxford by 86 wins to 81 (there was a useless warmth in 1877). Cambridge are much more dominant within the historical past of the ladies’s race, with 47 victories to Oxford’s 30.

Whoever wins, nevertheless, they have to be cautious of over-celebrating.  Levels of E. coli had been discovered to be as much as 10 instances larger than what the Environment Agency considers acceptable for the worst bathing waters graded poor on a stretch of the river that shall be used for this Saturday’s occasion.

As such, each crews have been warned to not enter the water and to scrub themselves down on the end line.

Guidance issued suggests rowers cowl cuts, grazes and blisters with waterproof dressings and take care to not swallow any river water to keep away from getting ailing.

Last 12 months, British Rowing, the game’s nationwide governing physique, mentioned it had obtained an elevated variety of reviews of sicknesses amongst rowers.

Most sorts of E.coli are innocent or trigger comparatively transient diarrhoea.

But just a few strains, similar to E.coli O157:H7, may cause extreme abdomen cramps, bloody diarrhoea and vomiting.

So there you could have it, go for the win however keep out of the water, in as a lot as a ship crew can…

Stay right here for all of the motion on the Thames.