28 March 2026

By Tim Koch

Tim Koch views the trailers for the 4 April main feature.

The Boat Race website tells us that, Turning The Tide 2026 is an all-access docu-series telling the story of the amateur student athletes as they build up to The CHANEL J12 Boat Race 2026, the oldest rivalry in sport.

Episode 1: A Dream Realised. A journey 99 years in the making. This first episode of Turning The Tide 2026 follows two triallists for The CHANEL J12 Women’s Boat Race 2026 in a campaign driven by history, resilience and belief. Meet Carys Earl (Cambridge) and Sarah Marshall (Oxford).

Episode 2: Making The Cut. Stepping up to make a Boat Race crew requires physical and mental aptitude – as well as a dash of something special. Meet Tobias Bernard (Oxford) and Simon Nunayon (Cambridge) as they strive to make the Blue Boat for The CHANEL J12 Boat Race 2026.

Episode 3: Day Of Reckoning. Meet Heidi Long (Oxford) and Noam Mouelle (Cambridge) as they tell us what’s at stake in The CHANEL J12 Boat Race 2026.

Of course, there is very little that the Boat Race has not seen before and cinema newsreel films following the crews in the run up to the big day were a feature from the 1920s.

Cambridge Crew In Training (1935). The voiceover is by a woman, very unusual for the time especially for what was then such a masculine subject. Unfortunately, I suspect that a man wrote the words and that he could not resist penning the silly closing remarks.

Meet The Oxford Crew (1936). Period undergraduate humour abounds here.