Cambridge 105 Radio - 2024 Boat Race - Seb Benzecry

The speaker discusses the upcoming boat race and their team's preparation. They mention that they have been racing against other crews and have learned valuable lessons. They expect a strong challenge from Oxford but feel confident in their own preparation. The speaker also talks about the selection process for their team and mentions the returning members and new additions. They express excitement about the event and advise savoring the experience. They mention the previous year's clean sweep but acknowledge that anything can happen on race day. They wish luck to all the crews for the upcoming race. We sat down here a few months ago and we were reminiscing about the 2023 boat race where you had a clean sweep for only the third time in history. You must be very excited to do it all again. Yeah, I mean, excited to go and race, not really thinking too much about any sort of potential results at the moment, but yeah, very excited to get down there and to be a part of it again, to be a part of the boat race again. How's the preparation going? It's been going really well. I think all the squads are in a really good place, men's and women's and the lightweights as well. I think everyone's really sort of hit their stride and we hopefully are peaking at the right time. I think particularly for our squad, we've learned some pretty valuable lessons over the past few months, racing other crews like Oxford Brookes and Leander in our fixtures and our pre-race fixtures. And I think we've come out the other side of that, a much stronger unit. So yeah, I'm really, really pleased with how everything's gone. How did you get on in those pre-race fixtures? Well, so we do three. The first one was against the Dutch national team. I'm speaking for the blue boat here. And that was a very good set of races. I wasn't actually in it because I was ill, but the blue boat then was able to pretty handily beat that Dutch boat, so that was really good. Against Brookes, historically we always have some really good races with Oxford Brookes. They're a very, very strong university program, probably the strongest in the country. And we had a really good race with them that we lost, but I think really sort of, I don't know, helped show us what our strengths were and then what our weaknesses were as well. And I think we emerged off the back of that race with a much clearer sense of how to approach the boat race itself. And then against Leander, we kind of put that a little bit into practice and we had a really, really close race with a very strong Leander crew. So I think, you know, they were very good learning experiences. And I think off the back of them, you know, we had a good sort of, yeah, a good set of races that we can draw from looking ahead towards the rest of Oxford. I want to ask you about Oxford. How do you reckon they're going to prepare for this year's races, given that they got absolutely steamrolled, really? A clean sweep certainly isn't far off that, anyway. No, yeah. I mean, I know that every year Oxford are incredibly motivated and I'm sure this year there's that added motivation of basically every single Oxford crew wants to right a wrong in their, you know, perspective. So I think, I'm sure they'll come all guns blazing and I'm sure they've been training really, really hard. But, you know, obviously we have not been resting on any laurels and we've been pushing really like no other season I've ever been a part of. We've really sort of driven the standard on across the whole squad. I think, you know, because we anticipate a much stronger challenge from Oxford this year. So I think, yeah, I'm sure Oxford are in a good place but I think we're in a fantastic place. In terms of the squad itself, you've got a few returning faces and I think some new ones as well. Talk me through the selection process and what kind of a line-up you've got for the two races. Yeah, so the selection this year has been really, really tight, really tough actually. So we've had a number of returning Blues from last year. We had six returning rowers from last year's Blue Boat and then a few from Goldie as well. And then we've had some talent come in as well from both undergrad and postgrad and some really good rowers from American universities and some really good undergrads as well. So it's just a much stronger squad, I think, than last year. We really have quite significant depth and the way that Rob, our head coach, has approached the selection this year is that he's basically left things very open for quite a long period of time. So in 2023, we'd really selected the Blue Boat by January. We kind of knew pretty much what the line-up was going to be, whereas this year we've only really just announced the official selection. So things have been left more open for longer, which has given Guy the chance to continually progress over the course of the year. And we've got everyone just really, really fighting hard for seats, or we had everyone really, really fighting hard for seats all the way up through to the start of March. I think that's really left everyone in a really good physiological place. And now we've emerged with a Blue Boat that does actually look quite similar to last year's. We had five of the rowers from last year's Blue Boat, plus Kenny from Harvard, Gus from Durham, and then Tom Marsh, who stepped up from Goldie, and our coxswain is also from Harvard, Ed Bracey. But I think what's really cool for me is that the guys who were in last year's boat, I mean it's virtually unrecognisable what the guys from last year, the returners, are now outputting on the water in terms of their power and endurance. It's a whole new level, really, that we've managed to unlock. So I think that's been a really great development for us, and yeah, I'm excited to see what this crew can do. As president, what are your words of advice for people in the team, especially people who are new to the boat race? I think it's just about savouring it, really. It's such an amazing and unique event to be a part of, particularly in a sport like rowing, which is so niche, and for the majority of our rowing careers, the biggest races we ever do are national championships, maybe, where you get a couple hundred people watching. Or, I mean, some guys go to the world championships, and that's obviously a really, really cool experience as well, but it still feels quite small, quite niche. But then you arrive on boat race day, and it's the most incredible, incredible thing. The excitement, the number of people, the cameras, just the scale of the event is like nothing else in the sport. And I think, obviously, it's a difficult thing to go into as an athlete, and there's a huge amount of nerves, of kind of pressure, I guess. But I, for the past few years, just really tried to take a moment to savour being a part of that event, and sit on the start line. And instead of being overly nervous or overwhelmed by it, I just sort of look around and look at the crowds and enjoy that moment, because it's just not something that we're used to in this sport, and it's such a cool thing to be a part of. And last year, of course, it was very well documented that you did a clean sweep for only the third time in history. I think 2018 was the last time you'd done one. Is it fair to say that you're eyeing back-to-back clean sweeps, or just going to go with the flow? Oh, I mean, we're just going with the flow. I mean, you can never really plan for something like that, obviously. Every crew has to have a fantastic race, and there are things about last year that we've really... I mean, the veterans' race, both veterans' crews, obviously, winning was part of that clean sweep, and that was pretty amazing. And there were just so many kind of idiosyncrasies, and you can never, I don't know, claim to know what's going to happen on the day. The boat race is so full of unknowables, and it can be so variable. So we just have to prepare as best we can. And I know that every other Cambridge crew is preparing as best they can to put ourselves in as good a position as we can possibly be on the day. And then, you know, hopefully we win, and if everyone else wins, then, yeah, that'll be incredible. Well, I wish you and all the crews very good luck for the 2024 boat race, which is coming up on Saturday 30th of March, every Easter weekend. Thank you very much.