Boat Race 2023

[PlateBilledDuckyPerson]

Anyone about to settle down to watch this?

Really hoping for a change in fortune for the Oxford women this year.

Aw, don't think Oxford are going to catch up...

Well done Cambridge, chiz chiz

Yay!!

Aaaargh! All over for Oxford.

What a cracking, nail biting race that was!

Well done Cambridge!
Hope that Felix Oxford fella is ok.

I'm down to stumps!

What amazing effort by all involved, fantastic!!!

Thanks for the thread, @PlateBilledDuckyPerson ! Nice to watch it together.

I'm sad for Oxford but a well-deserved win for Cambridge, especially to reward the bravery of their cox.

Great fun @bellabelly !

See you all next year!

Really bit worried about Felix though, was so choppy up at Fulham too

Absolutely brilliant race

Well rowed Cambridge but I hope the Oxford lad is ok. It's easy to forget these are young amateur athletes and this is just a hobby to go alongside their studies.

How proud must the Parish brothers parents be? Not only to have 2 sons studying at Cambridge but to have them be part of the winning boat race crew, incredible!

Jasper Parish was amazing.

Hope the Oxford chap, Felix, is OK.

According to the Guardian, Felix Drinkall is OK but has been taken to hospital for check ups. Hope it is nothing long-lasting for him.

https://www.theguardian.com/sport/live/2023/mar/26/oxford-v-cambridge-boat-races-live

Not sure I like the look of the champagne just being sprayed like that! Really seems wasteful. I know it's traditional but I wish they'd just spray a bit of a bottle and then drink some and enjoy it as a reward for winning

Great races though

Hope the Oxford chap is ok. Must be hard to celebrate for Cambridge in that situation and worrying for Oxford.

Apparently it's English Sparkling Wine, not Champagne - supporting local industry 🍾

Not sure I like the look of the champagne just being sprayed like that! Really seems wasteful. I know it's traditional but I wish they'd just spray a bit of a bottle and then drink some and enjoy it as a reward for winning

Yes, they're giant bottles of Chapeldown sparkling wine too which is expensive and lovely! I don't think it's a good look at all, especially in the current climate. It These are world class young athletes, but this (which they've obviously been encouraged to do) taps into negative stereotypes and makes them look like entitled brats.

yes, exactly - especially after the segments about trying to making rowing less elite and more diverse, and all the work that both universities are doing to show that most students are not entitled rich kids.

Open a bottle as a celebration, and it happens to spray lots of them, fine, that's just fun, but to deliberately be told to do it like that just for the photo ops seems wrong and out of touch in the current climate especially.

Chapeldown sparkling wine too which is expensive and lovely!

Yes, I really like it too - I treated myself to some for my birthday in 2020 when it was lockdown and I couldn't do very much else.

I guess the point is that we're talking about it, so as an advertising strategy it's worked 😕 I think it might make me pause before buying it again though. It's a big treat so if anything detracts from that I might be tempted to try another brand.

It feels like they've cheapened the brand a bit. All those huge bottles just being pissed into thin air. (Maybe they were actually filled with schloer?!!)

And it's the fact that they were told to do it, in a choreographed way for the photos, and the fact that the actual purpose of the sparkling wine is now just to spray at the cox, which seems to move away from the idea of it as a celebration that sometimes gets a bit excited - it really just seems commercialised now and out of touch, and yes, cheapens the brand and makes the whole thing seem less of a student competition and more a professional, commericalised TV operation. I mean we know it is that, but this just sort of underlines it. They'd been trying to say how the boats were more studenty now, more undergraduates and less pro rowers, but this makes it seem much more of a business with advertising and photo ops.

Let's not distract from the sporting achievement, the comraderie, the rowing in unison, the months and months of commitment and early morning training sessions. Spraying of sparkling wine is a typical celebration in many different sports, it's tradition.

Well said. The teams were ultimately doing as their sponsors asked, and the publicity bit is a tiny part of the overall event.

Yeah, I don’t mind about the champagne / sparkling wine celebration at all. That’s now a standard celebratory gesture across many sports.