page_title: The Boat Race 1924
section_title: Background
hierarchical_section_title: The Boat Race 1924 / Background
caption_attribution_description: Men of the Day No. 742: Caricature of Mr Harcourt Gilbey Gold. Caption reads: "Tarka"
context_page_description: The 76th Boat Race took place on 5 April 1924. Held annually, the Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing race between crews from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge along the River Thames. Oxford were reigning champions, having won the previous year's race, and their crew was significantly heavier than their opponents for this year's race. Umpired by former rower Frederick I. Pitman, Cambridge won by ​4 ¹⁄₂ lengths in a time of 18 minutes 41 seconds, the fastest time since 1911. The victory took the overall record in the event to 40–35 in Oxford's favour.
context_section_description: The Boat Race is a side-by-side rowing competition between the University of Oxford (sometimes referred to as the "Dark Blues") and the University of Cambridge (sometimes referred to as the "Light Blues").  The race was first held in 1829, and since 1845 has taken place on the 4.2-mile (6.8 km) Championship Course on the River Thames in southwest London.  The rivalry is a major point of honour between the two universities and followed throughout the United Kingdom and worldwide.  Oxford went into the race as reigning champions, having won the 1923 race by three-quarters of a length, and led overall with 40 victories to Cambridge's 34 (excluding the "dead heat" of 1877).
  Oxford were coached by G. C. Bourne who had rowed for the university in the 1882 and 1883 races, Harcourt Gilbey Gold (Dark Blue president for the 1900 race and four-time Blue) and E. D. Horsfall (who had rowed in the three races prior to the First World War).  Cambridge's coaches were Francis Escombe, P. Haig-Thomas (four-time Blue who had rowed between 1902 and 1905) and David Alexander Wauchope (who had rowed in the 1895 race). For the sixteenth year the umpire was Old Etonian Frederick I. Pitman who rowed for Cambridge in the 1884, 1885 and 1886 races.
  Cambridge had few former Blues to call upon and despite measles striking at least one of the crew down, their rowing style was described by author and former Oxford rower George Drinkwater as "harmoniously together".  Conversely, Oxford's crew was experienced yet a "lack of uniformity" in early training evolved into a crew with "a turn of such extraordinary speed that being was as much as four to one on Oxford".
caption: Harcourt Gilbey Gold coached the Oxford crew.
exif: {}