ITV: The 2008 Boat Race

If ever there was a sporting final in which everyone involved was a loser, it was the Oxford-Cambridge Boat Race. Every year southwest London is gunked up by Oxbridge detritus, spilling out of tacky sports bars in their collegiate waterproofs. It is such an undeservedly self-pleased crowd. First, it’s as ridiculous a rivalry as there can be between two medieval university towns. With rivers. Second, they’re like intestinal parasites cheering on stool; two repulsive things happening to share the same space at the same time, but having nothing else in common. Third, none seem to understand the hollowness of their achievements. The rowers have rowed for 20 minutes and wasted a lot more time preparing to row for 20 minutes. The braying hordes of eager-to-belong undergraduates and empty-lived alumni, latter-day Calvinists that they are, have mistaken attendance at a prestigious university for objective superiority. One third will have been accepted because they were long groomed to pass tests, another third will have fooled the admissions tutors by exploiting their unfulfilled romantic yearnings with pretentious nonsense, and I suppose some are probably quite smart (these people don’t participate in the vacuousness of the boat race). Now, I don’t mean to imply that only a third of Oxbridge students are intelligent. It’s obviously a lot less than that.

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