In the run up to The Boat Race on 13 April, RowingStory.com looks at some of the reasons why it’s taken till 2025 – some 62 years after the first female astronaut went into space – for a women to be umpiring the Men’s Boat Race.

98 year ago, women rowers from Oxford and Cambridge Universities competed against each other for the first time. You may have noticed that I avoided using the phrase ‘Women’s Boat Race’ there, and that was because the authorities at Oxford (where the contest took place on 15 March 1927) felt that the sight of two women’s crews actually racing each other side-by-side would be ‘unseemly’. Instead, they were ‘permitted’ to be timed in separate rows over the course. Oxford won, not that that’s relevant to this narrative.

What is, perhaps, more pertinent to what some might call the male hegemony at the time was that while it was generally deemed acceptable that women rowed, there was a distinct view that they shouldn’t cox. Coxing, some held, was a man’s job. Perhaps because it involved giving commands?

International interlude

The first FISA-sanctioned rowing competitions for women took place in 1951, and the first European’s Women’s Rowing Championships in 1954. Women’s fours and quads both had to be coxed – by women. Maybe this was progress, of a sort.

In 1974 women’s rowing was added to the World Championships programme, and then to the Olympic Games in 1976. It wasn’t until 1985 though, that World Rowing (then known as FISA) extended the international racing distance to the 2,000m that men had always raced. Until then, women’s international rowing had been limited to 1,000m, a distance that happened to suit any crews taking anabolic steroids. That same year, Pauline Churcher became the first British woman to qualify as a World Rowing umpire.

Back to The Boat Race

For context, the first men’s race was in 1829 in Henley, moving to London in 1836, and taking place on what is now known as the Championship Course from 1845. The Women’s Boat Race was held at Henley until 2015, when venue parity was finally reached and both the women’s blue boat and reserve races moved to the Tideway, taking an equal place in the day’s programme with the men’s races.

That’s the rowing, but what of the coxes and umpires? Sue Brown was the first woman to cox in the men’s blue boat race, steering Oxford to victory back in 1980, while Carole Burton was the first female cox to be selected for the Cambridge blue boat in 1986.

But it took until this century for a woman to take charge of the conduct of a Boat Race as a whole; Di Ellis umpired the Women’s Boat Race in Henley from 2000-2002, followed by Fiona Dennis in 2003. World Rowing Umpire Judith Packer umpired it in 2014, the final time it took place there.

At this point it’s worth explaining that until quite recently, that key qualification for umpiring The Men’s Boat Race was that you were a previous Blue. The Boat Race Umpiring Panel recruited suitable candidates, who started by umpiring the Isis-Goldie reserve race before moving on to the main event.

When the Women’s Race moved to the Tideway, the initial plan had been that women would umpire the women, and men would umpire men. However, the Umpiring Panel rapidly realised that it was important for the high-profile first women’s race on the Chamnpionship Course to be umpired with someone experience of commanding the race on the Tideway, so the gender link was broken before it even started.

In 2017, Sarah Winckless umpired the Women’s Boat Race on the Tideway. In 2020 she was selected as umpire for the Men’s Boat Race with Judith Packer for the Women’s Boat Race. This would have been the first time that both blues races would be umpired by women. Except, of course, the 2020 races didn’t happen because of the Covid-19 pandemic. Sarah and Judith did then officiate at the 2021 Boat Races, but these were held at Ely due to ongoing restrictions.

And so it’s taken until 2025 for a woman finally to umpire the Men’s Boat Race on the Tideway.

Who is Sarah Winckless, 2025 Men’s Boat Race Umpire?

Sarah Winckless is supremely qualified for the role; she won the Women’s Boat Race for Cambridge three times from 1995-1997 and President for the last of these, and was a member of the GB Rowing Team from 1997-2008, winning two World titles and Olympic bronze in 2004.

But perhaps most importantly, she is still fully in touch with what it’s like to race side-by-side on the Championship Course herself because she’s one of the Cambridge crew who will be competing there in the Women’s Veteran Boat Race on 12 April, the day before this year’s Boat Race.

Now, you can’t say that about most Boat Race umpires.