20 March 2025

By Tim Koch

As I mentioned in yesterday’s piece on the Boat Race crew eligibility row, the online Sun and the Mail Online, neither of which usually cover the Boat Race, reported on the story. To be fair, the Sun’s effort written by Joshua Jones could be worse and the Mail’s piece by Dan Woodward is also competent.

Woodward ends by recalling some past Boat Race controversies. In this, he had two surprises.

First, he managed to avoid going full Mail anti-woke when writing about Sarah Gibson, who identified as non-binary and who rowed for Blondie in 2018.

Second, Woodward finished with this:

The war of words even goes back as far as 1877, when the race was declared a dead heat, with both Oxford and Cambridge finishing in 24 minutes and 8 seconds.

It is thought the Oxford team had questioned whether race judge John Phelps – who was over 70 and blind in one eye – was fit enough to declare a winner after getting drunk and falling asleep under a bush at the conclusion of the race. 

This account has however been rebuked by historians who claim it was “not true” despite other seemingly reliable sources “having repeated and embellished different versions of this tale.” 

I have long campaigned for the rehabilitation of John Phelps’ reputation. In the official 2014 Boat Race Programme I wrote:

“Honest John” became a music hall joke (“Oxford won, Cambridge too!’) and “1877” cast a long shadow over a proud Putney family that had served rowing well for generations. The tragedy is that the popular stories concerning John’s conduct were simply not true and, in the words of the Boat Race Official Centenary History, “….no good grounds have been shown for doubting the rightness of John Phelps’s decision.” Maurice Phelps, the family historian, adds that “…the (dead heat) decision was not only brave but almost stoic.”

My campaign seems to have had little effect and the same old “Dead heat to Oxford by six feet” and “Drunk under a bush” stories are regularly trotted out by people who should know better. However, the Mail Online, an organ that I usually despise on many levels, has here acknowledged that, “This account has however been rebuked by historians…” and the quotes me (not by name) as saying that “seemingly reliable sources” have “repeated and embellished different versions of this tale.”

Favourably and accurately quoted by the Mail! I do not know whether to be flattered or embarrassed. 

My 2014 documentary on Phelps and the 1877 race is on YouTube.

*For the benefit of non-British readers, the stereotypical view of the (admittedly popular) print Daily Mail and the Mail Online is that it depicts a world where “British values” are under constant attack by immigrants, the woke, Muslims, assertive women, people on welfare etc. Wikipedia no longer accepts links to Daily Mail stories to support citations because it is “too unreliable.” The phrase “shock horror” is a British tabloid cliché often used to describe something that actually evokes neither emotion.