page_title: The Boat Race
section_title: 1987 Oxford mutiny
hierarchical_section_title: The Boat Race / History of the men's race / 1987 Oxford mutiny
caption_attribution_description: English: Cambridge VIII at their stake boat on the Surrey station before the start of the 2009 Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race just upstream of Putney Bridge. The bow side oarsmen have their blades "overfeathered" to keep them out of the strong stream, a feature almost unique to the start of the boat race, and the cox's right arm is raised to indicate that the crew is not ready for the start.
context_page_description: The Boat Race is an annual set of rowing races between the Cambridge University Boat Club and the Oxford University Boat Club, rowed between open-weight eights on the River Thames in London, England. There are separate men's and women's races, as well as races for reserve crews. It is also known as the University Boat Race and the Oxford and Cambridge Boat Race.
  The men's race was first held in 1829 and has been held annually since 1856, except during the First and Second World Wars and the COVID-19 pandemic. The first women's event was in 1927 and the race has been held annually since 1964. Since 2015, the women's race has taken place on the same day and course, and since 2018 the combined event of the two races has been referred to as "The Boat Race". In the 2019 races, which took place on Sunday 7 April 2019, Cambridge won the men's and women's races as well as both reserve races.
  The course covers a 4.2-mile stretch of the Thames in West London, from Putney to Mortlake. Members of both crews are traditionally known as blues and each boat as a "Blue Boat", with Cambridge in light blue and Oxford in dark blue.
context_section_description: Following defeat in the previous year's race, Oxford's first in eleven years, American Chris Clark was determined to gain revenge: "Next year we're gonna kick ass ... Cambridge's ass. Even if I have to go home and bring the whole US squad with me."  He recruited another four American post-graduates: three international-class rowers (Dan Lyons, Chris Huntington and Chris Penny) and a cox (Jonathan Fish), in an attempt to put together the fastest Boat Race crew in the history of the contest.
  Disagreements over the training regime of Dan Topolski, the Oxford coach ("He wanted us to spend more time training on land than water!", lamented Lyons), led to the crew walking out on at least one occasion, and resulted in the coach revising his approach. A fitness test between Clark and club president Donald Macdonald (in which Clark triumphed) resulted in a call for Macdonald's removal; it was accompanied with a threat that the Americans would refuse to row should Macdonald remain in the crew. As boat club president, Macdonald "had absolute power over selection", and when he announced that Clark would row on starboard, his weaker side, Macdonald would row on the port side and Tony Ward was to be dropped from the crew entirely, the American contingent mutinied.  After considerable negotiation and debate, much of it conducted in the public eye, Clark, Penny, Huntington, Lyons and Fish were dropped and replaced by members of Oxford's reserve crew, Isis.
  The race was won by Oxford by four lengths, despite Cambridge being favourites.
  In 1989 Topolski and author Patrick Robinson's book about the events, True Blue: The Oxford Boat Race Mutiny, was published. Seven years later, a film based on the book was released. Alison Gill, the then-president of the Oxford University Women's Boat Club, wrote The Yanks at Oxford, in which she defended the Americans and claimed Topolski wrote True Blue in order to justify his own actions. River and Rowing Museum founder Chris Dodd described True Blue as "particularly offensive" yet also wrote "[Oxford] lacked the power, the finesse—basically everything the pre-mutiny line-up had going for it."
caption: Cambridge at their stakeboat, just before the start of the 2009 race
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