The first race on the water on Easter Saturday is the women’s, at 2:21pm. Cambridge are going for a ninth consecutive win. Oxford have not won since 2016. And this year, Oxford have assembled a very strong challenge.
🚣 Everything you need for Boat Race day in Putney, where to stand, which pubs open early, transport tips and all the build-up, is on our dedicated Boat Race guide page.
“We’ve lost a boat race for the last nine races,” Oxford president Heidi Long says in the Boat Race documentary Turning The Tide. “So if we keep doing the same thing, we’re probably going to get the same result. We have got to really try and do something that we’ve never done before.”
Long, 29, is an Olympic bronze medallist who won her medal in the British women’s eight at Paris 2024. She strokes the Oxford boat from Lady Margaret Hall and has spoken openly about what the race means to her. “Rowing has helped me get through life’s many challenges,” she writes in the Boat Race programme. “It’s given me more than I could ever have expected: purpose, resilience, confidence, and lifelong friendships.”
She also admits to nerves. “I get really nervous,” she says in the documentary. “It’s so meaningful, we put so much into it, and it all comes down to one day and one moment. If that doesn’t make you nervous then you’re some kind of superhuman.”
Oxford’s case
Long is not the only reason Oxford believe this could be their year. Esther Briz Zamorano, 26, is a Spanish Olympian who competed at Paris 2024, a two-time Beach Sprint world gold medallist, became the first Spanish woman to compete at junior world championship level in the single sculls, and holds a Stanford engineering degree. She is at St Edmund Hall on a one-year MBA, which means this is her only shot.
“It’s way cooler to join the underdogs, you know?” Briz Zamorano writes in the Boat Race programme. “Cambridge have been winning for years, but we have a good shot.”
In the documentary she is more direct. “This is my last year doing this, so if I want to get that infamous boat race win, then it’s now or never.”
Then there is Kyra Delray, 28, a European A-finalist and world medallist who is racing again after double hip surgery. Oxford’s squad is deep enough that one unnamed insider told the Boat Race programme: “If this was a boxing match it wouldn’t be sanctioned.”
The form line supports the confidence. Oxford won the Fours Head in the autumn by more than 22 seconds over Cambridge, the biggest margin in recent memory.
What happened last year
Oxford came into the 2025 race with similar optimism, and chose aggression. Their cox Daniel Orton steered hard from the start. Umpire Matthew Pinsent issued multiple warnings. Before the crews had even cleared the Fulham Wall, they clashed, Cambridge five-seat Sophia Hahn lost her blade, and Pinsent stopped the race.
It was the first restart in Women’s Boat Race history. Pinsent could have disqualified Oxford on the spot. He chose to restart instead, giving Cambridge a third-of-a-length advantage. Cambridge won by two and a half lengths anyway.
That result is the context for Long’s quote about doing something different. Oxford tried force in 2025 and it did not work. This year’s crew is built on talent, not tactics.
Cambridge’s case
Cambridge’s strength is continuity. Their president Gemma King, 26, is in her eighth year at Cambridge and her seventh consecutive Boat Race crew. She has won five times. “This is my eighth and final year at CUBC,” she writes in the programme, “so doing everything for the last time has felt very strange.”
King’s composure under pressure has been tested before. In the documentary, she sounds almost zen about the challenge. “We can’t control what Oxford are doing. All we can do is make sure that we’ve done everything we can, we’re as fast as we can.”
Behind King, Cambridge have added serious international firepower. Camille VanderMeer won world gold with the USA women’s four in Shanghai and arrived in Cambridge days later. Antonia Galland made her senior debut for the German women’s eight at the 2023 world championships. Cambridge have depth where Oxford have stars, and eight consecutive wins where Oxford have ambition.
Dr Kate Hays, the sports psychologist who has worked with both squads, injects some drama into the showdown: “The hunter has certainly become the hunted.”
The men’s race: a quick guide
The men’s race at 3:21pm has its own story. Cambridge president Noam Mouelle is going for a fourth consecutive win, having become the first Black man to race the Boat Race in 2023. He is completing a physics PhD on dark matter. “This year has a special taste to it because I know that there won’t be another year,” he says in the documentary. “I’m making sure that I’m taking this in and enjoying it as much as I can.”
It is also the first time in Boat Race history that both men’s presidents are French, with Oxford’s Tobias Bernard on the other side. Felix Rawlinson, a former under-23 world champion, has switched from Oxford to Cambridge. And Gabriel Obholzer rows for Oxford following his father Rupert, who won a Blue in 1991 and took Olympic bronze at Atlanta in 1996.
Saturday, 2:21pm, Putney Bridge
The women’s race is the 80th edition and the 10th on the Tideway since the women moved to the Championship Course in 2015. Oxford won the first two of those races, in 2015 and 2016, but have not won since. Long and her crew believe this is the year that changes.
“It almost is scary to even dream about standing on that podium,” Long says quietly in the documentary. Then, louder: “If Oxford could go out there and win the boat races, that would just be incredible.”
Whether they can remains to be seen. But the women’s race at 2:21pm on Easter Saturday is the one to watch.
🚣 Our full Boat Race guide page has everything else you need: where to stand, transport, pubs and all the build-up. We also have an interactive guide to all 36 rowers in this year’s crews.
Correction (31 March 2026): An earlier version of this article stated that Oxford had not won any of the ten women’s races on the Tideway since 2015. Oxford won in 2015 and 2016. The sentence has been corrected. Cambridge’s winning streak runs from 2017. Thanks to reader (and former Cambridge cox) Emily Insanally for the correction.
