The first time Alice Roberts rowed the stretch of the Thames where the 73rd Women’s Boat Race will take place on Saturday her oar snapped, she burst into tears and her three team-mates were forced to row the last 500m with her blade dragging in the water.
Roberts was 14, eager but inexperienced having only learned to row a year earlier when her state school become one of the few in the country to have its own rowing club. Five years on the Oxford University student smiles at the memory as she prepares for her second Boat Race.
“It was going so well,” she says. “But just as I made the last call, black buoy, which signalled there was 500m to go, my blade snapped in half. It took us 10 minutes to row the last bit – and to make matters worse, my friends in the boat then had to row back to Barnes bridge. It took an hour and a half and I just sat there freezing and crying.”
Yet that was not the end of the story. “I wanted to keep the broken oar but my coach said he needed it for insurance purposes,” she explains. “But unbeknown to me he took it to Bisham Abbey, where he worked and the GB rowing team train, and gave it to the Olympic champion Dame Katherine Grainger to sign.
“A week later he gave me the oar – and Dame Katherine had written on it: ‘Alice, congratulations on smashing some blades – now go and smash some records!’”
So far the 19-year-old Roberts, who is in the second year of a philosophy and linguistics degree, is doing her best to live up to Grainger’s advice. But without her alma mater, Cheney school in Headington, starting Oxford’s first state school rowing club, she probably would not have taken up the sport.
“I was a competitive swimmer but when the school set it up, I thought I’d give it a go,” she says. “We would do one session a week on the erg (indoor rowing machine) and then after lunch every Wednesday we would walk 20 minutes to the water and row. There weren’t many people at first but we had Peter Haining, a three-time world champion helping us out, so it was quite cool.”
The story soon caught the attention of the local newspaper, the Oxford Times, who noted how pupils “were blowing the elitist rowing club stereotype out of the water”. They also spoke to Roberts, then 14, who admitted: “I never thought I would have been able to become a rower – it always seemed too expensive. But now it has me hooked.”
At that stage she had also joined the City of Oxford rowing club and within two years she had international trials. “At my club there were other state school kids around me and it felt pretty normal,” she remembers. “But sometimes at trials and regattas you would notice the differences. When I had GB trials I just went with my mum because I was the only person from my club doing it. But Headington girls’ school, which isn’t far from my old school, had 15 girls there – along with several specialist coaches.
“All the coaches at my club were volunteers so it did feel like a different level. But what I like about rowing is that it brings everyone together.”
This will be the fourth year that the men’s and women’s races have been run in and televised the same afternoon – with the women starting at 4.31pm and the 164th men’s race beginning just over an hour later. “It’s definitely led to more of a mutual respect – which is only right given we are doing basically the same programme and training,” she says.
Since the autumn Roberts has juggled training six days a week – including an hour-long indoor row first thing in the morning before going out on the water each afternoon – with her studies. For the last week much of her time has been spent navigating the four-and-a-quarter-mile course between Putney and Mortlake.
“I’ve joked that I have a Tideway curse where I have a disaster every time I row along that stretch of the river,” she says, laughing. “In past races my blade has broke, a coxbox has broke, a friend tore a hamstring and obviously there was last year too [when Oxford made a bad start and eventually lost by 11 lengths]. But I broke the curse when we won the trial eights race in January – and now I can’t wait for the race.”
Most experts believe that Cambridge’s women will win comfortably. However, Roberts insists her team are making significant progress under their new coach, Andy Nelder, who previously guided the Oxford men’s reserve boat to nine out of 10 Boat Race victories, and can spring a big surprise.
“When I arrived at Oxford, I thought I’m too small, I’m not good enough at rowing,” she adds, quietly. “But I’ve improved, and we’ve improved. And when people say we can’t win it only makes us row harder.”
