It's been wet, as you may have noticed, so members of the Boat Club have had to find other ways of keeping themselves amused: for most, the number of crew-dates has exceeded the number of outings on the water. Just one of the three Isis Winter League races scheduled for this term went ahead, and there was doomed attempt to get Christ Church Regatta under way, which lasted all of one day. Even so, our rowers have managed to notch up a couple of successes (in competitions, I mean, I don't know about the crew-dates). The Captains provide their reports.

We include a look back at the Boat Club of 40 years ago and, before bidding farewell to this Olympic year, I thought it would be of interest to include New College's tale of Olympic glory from 100 years ago (a little history is a good thing but, as a Catz oarsman, I'm quite happy not to have had such a weighty burden on my shoulders).

Finally, having spent far too much time of late sitting in front of my computer rather than out sculling, I've been pondering how to assess quantitatively where we currently stand in the grand scheme of Oxford college rowing.

New College Indoor Erg Regatta, 8th November
4x500m relay
Senior Women (6 entries)
1st	St Catz	Anne de Geus, Inge Hertzog, Poppy Lambert & Isobel Renton

Isis Winter League A, 11th November
61 crews raced
1st	4:52.8	Men's 1

The term started encouragingly with very successful recruitment across the board, however the river was red flag from the start, setting the stage for a much disrupted term. We were given a brief reprieve in 4th and 6th week with some green/blue flags, but recent flooding saw the introduction of the 'DOOM' flag by OURCs[footnote:Even OURCs officials get bored when they have nothing to officiate], heralding 'Exceptional potential for doom' amongst other things.

Rob Hamlet, Men's Captain

With the above river conditions it was a frustrating term for novice rowing here in Oxford, culminating in the cancellation of Christ Church novice regatta before either of our crews could race. Despite the lack of actual rowing so far, lower boats captains Owen Leyshon and George Shankar have managed to retain a good number of novices interested in taking it further. The crews showed great promise in the brief outings of the 6th week 'eye of the storm', and we look forward to fully integrating them into the senior way of life next term.

St Catherine's racing in the Isis Winter League A

For the women Michaelmas began a month prior to the first week of term. With the help of our new coach, Malcolm Spencer, twelve seniors returned to Oxford having spent September training. The arrival of new students not only saw a large intake of novice rowers, but the addition of a new senior, Anne de Geus, who we were lucky to retain after interest from the Blues squad!

Isobel Renton, Women's Captain

Sadly the river has only allowed four or five outings per crew and the few outings we have been allowed were only made possible by Joshua Morgan (Captain of Coxes) who donated huge amounts of his time and experience to coxing nearly all of the women's senior and novice, and men's novice outings.

Unfortunately for the novices after one very wet morning of Christ Church the whole regatta was cancelled. However our lower boats captains, Poppy Lambert and Katherine Pears, must have done something right as the number of novices moving into the senior training program has more than doubled our squad.

During the early 1970s, SCCBC reached a high-water mark in terms of its progress up the bumps charts: reaching 6th on the river in Torpids and 12th in Eights, levels unsurpassed until the new millennium (currently we lie 7th and 9th). This was before the days of mixed colleges and women's divisions.

At that time they were experimenting with Torpids rules and had done away with Sandwich Boats and the tiresome business of having to race twice in close succession (there being, of course, no intercalated women's divisions). Instead, the 1st division started with 6 boats while the other five divisions all had 9. On the second day the division boundaries were all moved down one position: the 1st division comprising 7 boats, the 6th division 8. And so on. The boat finishing top of each division was thus effectively promoted to the next division the following day.

During the 1973 Torpids, starting 6th (i.e., at the bottom of the 1st Division) St Catz bumped Queen's on the Thursday to rise to 5th - their highest ever position at the time - only to lose that place to Worcester later in the week. But having already peaked in Eights in 1971, Catz 1st VIII followed it with spoons the next year and 1973 was only a little better: being bumped on the first three days and dropping from 16th to 19th on the river.

The following extracts are from the Boat Club minute book

New College Boat Club is the only Oxbridge College club to have been selected to represent Great Britain at the Olympics.

In 1912, Great Britain sent two men's crews to the Olympics in Stockholm, Sweden. One was a Leander crew, mostly comprised of Magdalen College (Oxford) rowers, and captained by the Magdalen captain. The second was the New College 1st VIII.

The two British crews were the favourites for gold so started at opposite ends of the draw. They both worked up through the competition to make the final. The course in Stockholm was not straight, and one of the two lanes was clearly favoured, the other requiring the cox to steer around a protruding boathouse and then back under a bridge.

Before the final, the two British captains met to toss for lanes. New College won the toss and following gentlemanly tradition offered the choice of lanes to their opponents, who would - in a gentlemanly fashion - refuse this offer. However the Leander/Magdalen captain accepted this offer and chose the better lane. Leander went on to win the gold medal, leaving New College with the silver.

King Gustav V of Sweden was so disheartened by this display of ungentlemanly conduct that, as a consolation, he presented his colours to New College. Ever since then, New College have raced in purple and gold, the colours of the royal house of Sweden. A further tradition has been the adoption of the toast: God Damn Bloody Magdalen!, the supposed words of the New College stroke Robert Bourne as they crossed the line. The abbreviation GDBM is still used commonly, being on the bottom of the NCBC letterhead to this very day.

On June 11th, 2012, there was a rematch on the Isis between New College and Magdalen, which Magdalen again won, but this time without any complaint from New.

The table on the right shows my attempt to quantify this.

For the mathematically inclined: I've assigned each crew finishing in position i on the river a score of

I don't think many would argue against Pembroke and Christ Church coming out top, but Wadham's 3rd place is unexpected. It results from their highly-placed women's 1st VIII (2nd in Torpids and Eights) and large number of crews: 13, compared with our 9.

On this basis, St Catherine's currently lies 13th. Perhaps surprisingly low considering that the average position of our men's and women's 1st boats on the river is around 9th, but I think accurately reflecting the fact that our lower boats are fewer in number and placed lower than those of the colleges above of us in the table.

We'll take another look at this after next Torpids to see how things have changed.

Anu Dudhia (email: dudhia@atm.ox.ac.uk )