So the Boat Race yesterday was ruined by a swimmer. It now looks like he felt he was protesting against something. "This is a protest, an act of civil disobedience, a methodology of refusing and resistance," he wrote. He described the race as "a public event, for and by the elites with broader social relations aims"
Does anyone have any sympathy for him or people doing this kind of thing?
And how likely do you think it is that events at the Olympics will also be disrupted like this? Aren't there anti-capitalist groups saying they are going to protest at the Olympics etc?
Comments
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iYy4z2uky5M
I wouldn't have cared if he'd copped an oar across his head. But then I think the boat race is an irrelevance and I only watch it in the hope one of the crews will sink.
They should hold it at Dorney Lake or the Pinsent Redgrave Lake.
I enjoy watching it on tv and intend to go down to London next year to watch it. The last time I went to watch Chelsea play football it cost me £48 for a ticket. You can watch the boat race from the banks of the Thames for free.
People seem to take it the wrong way. The boat race isn't about snobbery or elitism. It's a British event that many people enjoy viewing. I'm quite shocked that people on here, runners, would knock a sporting event.
Well to be accurate. one has expressed disinterest rather than knock it.
I can only imagine how I might feel if a protestor -for any reason - disrupted a race I had trained for months. Without wishing to sound like Harry Enfield, if it happened to me, I'd want to knock him out.
If Trenton had any real guts and commitment, he might have chosen the long game, where by the strength of his argument and his political will he might be able to bring about any changes he might like to see applied to the Elite.
But he's like those Fathers for Justice guys, incapable of changing a nappy or maintaining a relationship, so they invade Buckingham Palace instead.
I went to Cambridge Uni many moons ago........and *shock, horror* I went from an East Midlands comprehensive ......so not very elite!
I also fail to understand why an Aussie protester is getting so hot under the collar about English elitism ??
I just feel really sorry for the guys (& girl) in the boats.......all those hours and hours of training for it to be ruined
Me too.
agree Rickster, im an Oxford girl and that was awful to see the Dark blues have that happen to them. Boat race is a 'must see' in my house and i agree witht Saffy that those lads and the female cox have spent months on cold dark early mornings on cold rivers training for that lifetime experience....and as the Oxford captain said, it was all taken away from them in a moment of someones idiocy. personally i think that with a disruption on that scale the whole event should have been re-started completely on another day. the teams focus was lost after that break , there was no way their composure could be fully regained to complete that race properly. a difficult decision for the umpire and he did his best to continue the event..
Also felt sorry for Cambridge , they couldnt really celebrate either and was terrible to see the Oxford bow rower in distress at the end. hoping he is ok now.
Regarding OP's original questions:
No sympathy - he targetted 'innocents' who had worked bloody hard to deserve their day in the river
Yes -sadly
According to the Grauniad he's a "former student of contemporary urbanism at the London School of Economics", whatever that means. In his own words, it was "a protest, an act of civil disobedience, a methodology of refusing and resistance" ...This act has employed guerrilla tactics. I am swimming into the boats in the hope I can stop them from completing the race and proposing the return of surprise tactics. This is 'peaceful' … I have no weapons (don't shoot!)."
Not sure what kind of "elitism" he's against - the selection procedures for Oxbridge or for the rowing crews (haven't there been arguments about mercenaries before?)
A bit of a dickhead, anyway.
They're not socially elitist, they just take the brainiest people. So his justification for his protest holds not water, excuse the pun!
Was he turned down for a place at Oxford or Cambridge by any chance? Is that where his grievance arose from?
Tosser.
Agreed. He even had the gall to complain of being roughly handled in the boat which picked him up - if you ask me he's lucky he avoided a beating, especially just sitting there grinning triumphantly.
The thing that I found a shame is that although he didn't stop the race entirely, he probably did change the result; it looked to be headed Oxford's way when they stopped, and again prior to the clash. The umpire was technically correct to allow the race to finish after the clash, but personally I think I'd have halted it and ordered a re-row today (which has happened in the past and for which there are contingency plans). The Oxford cox was very responsive to all of the umpire commands and it's extremely harsh to have decided the race like that. I was almost surprised the Cambridge crew took the win.
I think organisationally the one change they might want to make is to get rid of 90% of the following flotilla; it might have been possible to re-start much sooner, or perhaps not even stop at all, if there hadn't been hundreds of following boats.
Still, plenty of marathon runners here know what it's like to have six months of hard training go down the toilet for daft reasons.
I agree with everything that has already been said, but also want to add a bit on a personal note.
As an outdoor swimmer, we often get stupid restrictions put on where we can swim even though it is perfectly safe. Idiots like this provide fuel for the huge number of people who think that open water swimming is dangerous and should be banned. I think everyone on here is aware that this person isn't actually a swimmer at all, but was doing it as a protest, but there are always some who use it as an excuse to restrict the use of the outdoors by the public even more.
So thanks for the negative publicity, Mr. Tosser.
XFRbear - what I meant is that she (in fact both) responded well each time the umpire warned them prior to the swimmer and there were no clashes up to that point, which surprised me a little after some of the warm-up events. Clearly she didn't (or wasn't able to) move out of the way at the final clash, which is why the umpire allowed the result to stand - if Cambridge had broken an oar in that instance, he would have had to disqualify Oxford. It's hard to tell from the TV footage what was going on there, but it's extremely difficult to steer during the stresses of a high-speed start in choppy water and she had no real reason in that position to want to push Cambridge towards Surrey. The still photos certainly don't suggest she was pushing over - if anything the contrary.
i agree Tmap that although the oars were definatly close in the first half she did respond and they moved apart. i think she had the right to oppose the decision and outcome at the end of the race although clearly it was all such a mess and it wasnt just one occurence that led to the end result.
i think too as i said before that a total re-run should have been done today. the end result wasnt a true or fair outcome of either teams efforts.
The umpire shouts "Oxford" numerous times in rapid succession at the start - if the Oxford cox had responded well there'd have been no need to carry on shouting it beyond a couple of times. In other words she completely ignored him. If you believe the Oxford cox responded well, why did he keep shouting at them?
The umpire stated at the end that Oxford were off their station (i.e. they were encroaching on Cambridge) and presumably that's why he repeatedly warned Oxford earlier in the race too.
Obviously it's a great shame the race had to be halted by the swimmer and I wouldn't disagree that that event may well have affected the result of the race, but as far as losing a chunk of one of their blades, Oxford only have themselves (in particular their cox) to blame for it, so I'm quite happy for the result to stand.
The obvious reason for one crew to try to push another crew over is that they're trying to grab the best of the stream (the fastest flowing bit of water) and push the other crew out of it. As a cox who spent many years prior to attending Oxford on that chunk of the Thames I imagine the Oxford cox was very aware of where that was. It's a technique frequently used and I've seen many crews try to push that as far as they can without getting disqualified, but if it ends up coming back to bite you on the backside then that's too bad as far as I'm concerned.