ROWING

Brentford F.C.

Brentford F.C. was founded by a rowing club to have something to do during the winter. Fuller's brewery helped the side to acquire its former Griffin Park ground, which opened in 1904. The brewery's livery included a griffin. This was renowned for having a pub on each corner. The club moved to its Brentford Community Stadium in 2020.

Location: Braemar Road, TW8 0NT

See Also: SOCCER CLUBS Brentford F.C.

Website: www.brentfordfc.com

Furnivall Sculling Club

Frederick Furnivall was keen of rowing. In 1896 he founded the Hammersmith Sculling Club. Initially, the membership was restricted to women. In 1901 the club admitted men. Following Furnivall's death, it was renamed in his honour.

The philologist served as the initial editor of the dictionary that, following his stewardship of it, became The Oxford English Dictionary. He is reputed to have been a model for the character Ratty in Kenneth Grahame's novel The Wind In The Willows (1908). Unlike the rodent, Furnivall had a married life. He scandalised his relatives first by marrying a servant and then scandalised them further by leaving her.

Location: Furnivall Sculling Club, 19 Lower Mall, Hammersmith Hard, W6 9DJ

Website: www.furnivall.org

Megaphones

Sir Samuel Morland (1625-1695) is reputed to have invented the megaphone.

Location: St Paul's Church, Queen Caroline Street, W6 6PJ. Morland's corpse was interred in the churchyard.

The Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race

The University Boat Race is a rowing race that is held annually between teams from the University of Oxford and the University of Cambridge. The 6779m.-long (4 miles and 374 yards) upstream course runs from Putney Bridge to Chiswick Bridge. The first race was held in 1829, it having been organised by Charles Merivale of St John's College Cambridge and Charles Wordsworth of Christ Church Oxford. The two men knew one another through having been contemporaries at Harrow School. The Race has been an annual event since 1856.

Many of the two universities colleges had missions in the poorer district of the metropolis. Ordinary Londoners used to wear rosettes for one team or the other. Boat Race Night was celebrated in Trafalgar Square by thousands ordinary Londoners.

The covid pandemic caused the 2021 Boat Race to be rowed on a very straight stretch of the River Ouse to the north of Ely in Cambridgeshire. This was the first time since 1944 that race had occurred on a river other than the Thames.

Website: www.theboatrace.org

The Goat Race

On the same day as the annual Oxford & Cambridge Boat Race the Spitalfields City Farm holds a Goat Race.

Location: Buxton Street, E1 5AR (blue, brown)

Website: www.spitalsfieldcityfarm.org/whats-on/2019/4/7/oxford-cambridge-goat-race

The Mutiny Race

Dan Topolski became transfixed by the Boat Race was a seven-year-old, when he watched it for the first time. He did so from Chiswick riverside home of the artist Julian Trevelyan. He learnt to row on the lake in The Regent s Park. He went up to New College Oxford.¹ There, he was regarded as having too slight a build to be a good oarsman. However, he already had a well-developed technique and proved to have stamina. He earned a place for in the college boat. He had grown up to be a laid-back, stylish, Bohemian. He had the crew dressed in Biba-designed singlets. He rowed in the Oxford boat in both the 1967 and 1968 University Boat Races.

Topolski s focus upon rowing impacted upon his studies. He was awarded a fourth-class degree. In the 1977 world championships he represented Britain in Amsterdam. The light eight in which he rowed won a gold medal.

In 1968 the Oxford boat had been expected to win. It had lost. He started coaching part-time the same year. The Cambridge run of victories ran for another five years. In 1972 he became the Oxford chief coach. The position was unpaid. He developed an intense, demanding regime that enabled indifferent oarsmen to excel. Oxford won every race from 1976 to 1985. Success bred success. Foreign oarsmen aspired to row for the Club.

Topolski s other rowing activities included coaching the British women's team for the Moscow Olympics. Susan Brown was its cox. In 1981 she steered the Oxford boat thereby becoming the first woman to take part in the race.

In 1983 Topolski included Boris Rankov, a postgraduate who had already won five Blues. Cambridge protested at this decision and threatened not to race. Topolski did not back down. The light blues gave way and Rankov rowed. However, subsequently, a rule was introduced about the number of times that an individual could row in the event.

Cambridge won the 1986 race. With Topolski s sanction, Chris Clark, an American, embarked upon a campaign to recruit leading oarsmen from the United States. The four new members were of the squad were: Jonathan Fish, Chris Huntington, Dan Lyons, and Chris Penney. At the time, they were among the most regarded oarsmen in the world.

During the winter of 1986-7 the University of Oxford Boat Club became politicised between the Americans and their supporters and the British oarsmen. The differences were focused upon two key issues. One was whether Donald McDonald, the President of the Club, should be in the boat. He was 31, having gone up to the university as a mature. Therefore, he was several years older than everyone else. However, his performance in training indicated that he merited his place. The other derived from the fact that the race was over 4 miles. This was over three times the 2000m distance that standard international races were rowed over. Topolski had devised an appropriate training regime that was focused upon developing endurance. The Americans baulked at its demands. They started devoting time to unrelated matters.

At a warm-up event the Oxford boat finished 28^th. Five weeks before the race Topolski had become sufficiently dissatisfied at Clark's performance that he indicated that he was not inclined to included him in the race day boat. The five Americans resigned en masse in order to try to force the coach's hand. The story was reported across the world. He declined to cave in. Instead, he appointed a series of relatively inexperienced undergraduates from the reserves and trained them intensively.

As race day drew near it became apparent that the weather was likely to be bad. Topolski took the unusual decision that the Oxford team should use wooden oars rather than the lighter plastic ones that had become virtually standard within the sport. This regarded as a retrograde decision by many informed commentators. However, the coach was of the firm belief that their greater weight would be more effective in rough conditions on the river. The 1973 defeat had occurred in such conditions after Topolski had failed to ensure that aerofoil outriggers had been fitted to the boat. On the day of the race there was a strong wind. He did not repeat his previous error. He also told the crew to head for the shelter of the Putney side as soon as they could rather than stay in the centre of the river which was the normal practice. The boat did as it had been bid. It established a lead that only increased as the race progressed.

The Oxford crew won by four lengths.

In 1988 Penney was elected the President of the Club. The organisation's structure underwent a number of changes. Mike Spracklen was appointed to be chief coach. Topolski opted to end his two-decades-long association with the body. However, in 1995 he resumed his association with it, giving its members the benefit of his knowledge and insights. Upon one occasion he had a lapse with regard to the former. He became so engaged with a particularly intense training session that he failed to observe what the tides were doing. When he returned to Putney Hard he found that his car had been engulfed by the river.

Location: 14 Hanover Terrace, NW1 4RJ. The Topolski family home. (orange, brown)

Durham Wharf, Hammersmith Terrace, W6 9TS. The Trevelyans home.

¹. His father, the Polish-born painter Feliks Topolski (1907-1989), was disappointed that he had not chosen to go to one of the old colleges. It had been founded in 1379.

David Backhouse 2024