Oxbridge Intergenerations Team Racing at Farmoor Reservoir, Oxford

Cambridge Late 00s Mixed Team win the Oxford & Cambridge Sailing Society's annual intergenerations © Anthony Butler

The twenty-fifth running of the Oxford & Cambridge Sailing Society's Intergeneration Team Racing took place on Saturday 5th October at Farmoor Reservoir, Oxford in near perfect weather.

The idea of the event is to get sailing blues from each decade and each university to squeeze into Fireflies and brush off their generally long forgotten team racing skills against each other and the current student teams – this is a harder task for some than others.

This is balanced by a unique handicapping system that gives each succeeding decade an extra point off their score in each race, while those not sailing 6 helm teams are given an extra half point for each non-helm. This provides an interesting mathematical challenge when calculating the scores, but fortunately the recruitment criteria for the two universities mean that most can do the maths.

For the 25th running of this event, there were 13 teams, ranging from those who sailed for Oxford and Cambridge from the 1960s to the current day. Competitors included an Olympic silver medallist, a multiple world champion (in fact Archie Massie was hot of the plane from Canada, fresh from his fourth consecutive International 14 world title), multiple national champions and some team racing hot shots.

The bulk of the day was the league stage which saw close competition in a league of 7 teams and one of 6. Every team won at least one match, and the league of 7 was particularly close. The 36 league races were completed by 2.30pm and the top two from each league moved forward to the semi finals.

Both semi-finals went to three races, but it was the Cambridge 90s Mixed team and Oxford Late 00s Mini who won out to the final where the Cambridge team dominated with 1st, 2nd and 3rd in both races, not needing their -2 handicap.

That evening many competitors, partners and other members of the Society donned black tie and evening dresses for a very successful dinner at Kellogg College (aka Corpus Crispy).

Overall Results: (top four)

1st Cambridge Late 00s Mixed
(Jamie McEwen, Luke McEwen, Archie Massey, Mark Carleton, Ian Armstrong, Zoe Camm)
2nd Oxford Late 00s Mini
3rd Oxford Early 00s
4th Oxford Current