PlayImagine the scenario: You drag yourself out of bed in the early hours of the morning for months of hard, heavy training; you give up on a social life and dedicate yourself to one race; and then on the day of the big event, not only do you lose but you don’t even reach the finish.
That’s pretty bad for an athlete or cyclist who has to pull up short, but even worse for a rowing crew who have to suffer the indignity of an impromptu soaking to add to their pain and heartache.
The Varsity Boat Race rarely throws up such an event, but it did 31 years ago when the Cambridge crew sunk without trace with barely a mile of the race to go.
The Light Blues went into the race looking to at least regain some pride after one of their heaviest defeats in their history 12 months earlier.
They had a young, ambitious crew, packed full of undergraduates, and despite losing the toss and starting on the Middlesex side, president Mark Horton believed his crew still had a good chance of victory.
After one false start and then a substantial delay, the race got underway at an electric pace as the young Cambridge crew somehow managed to keep pace with their more experienced rivals.
The gap was four seconds as the Dark Blues reached Hammersmith Bridge in record time, but soon things started to get tricky for both teams.
After Hammersmith, the crews entered the part of the course known as The Crossing, by far the most difficult part of the race. The best line to take is directly across the middle of the river but this involves the boats leaving the shelter of the shore, making them vulnerable to the prevailing south-westerly wind.
And on this particular day 30 years ago, that wind was howling and the driving rain was almost horizontal.
As Horton later wrote in The Guardian: "People don't realise quite how freakish the weather conditions were - a strong wind just blew up from nowhere after Hammersmith Bridge."
Both teams were soon in trouble but crucially only one of them, Oxford, had fitted their boat with splashboards which kept some of the water out – a decision only made after they had sunk in training the week before the race.
Despite the awful conditions and their boat filling with water, Cambridge made an heroic effort not only to stay afloat but to close the gap on the Oxford as the race entered its final stages.
But as the crews passed under Barnes Bridge and with the finish line in sight Cambridge could go on no further and it was left to Oxford to row to the line unchallenged to claim victory.
As Horton wrote: "The public have always regarded the 1978 Boat Race as a great joke but for those of us who took part it was anything but.
"The race was a culmination of months of training and effort and it was terribly frustrating for it to go to waste. Even now there's a strong feeling of unfinished business. I'd have loved to have rowed those last three minutes - they would have been the toughest of my life but I'd have given anything to have the chance."
Despite the heroic feats performed year in and year out on the Thames, it’s the sight of Cambridge sinking that has lived longest in the public’s consciousness. In a countdown for a TV programme a few years ago, it was named the 79th Greatest Ever Sporting Moment – a small crumb of comfort to the ’78 Cambridge crew.
