Cambridge race their "Trial Eights" along the famous Boat Race course from Putney to Mortlake tomorrow (Friday 8 December) at 3pm with high winds forecast once more.

Oxford raced today, in an event sponsored by Xchanging, in less than ideal conditions with their crews searching for shelter from time to time rather than trying to find the best route along the stream.

Cambridge have five returning Blues spread across their two crews for tomorrow’s race. These are: Tom James, won raced in a pair for Great Britain at the 2006 World Championships; Kieran West - an Olympic gold medallist in the 2000 Games of Sydney; Sebastian Schulte and Thorsten Engelmann, who both became world champions with Germany this year in an eight; and Kip McDaniel, the Canadian who stroked the 2006 Light Blue eight.

The Cambridge squad also includes a number of young rowers who have come through the club’s development scheme. These include Alastair Macleod, son of former Olympic rower Jamie Macleod, and Tobias Garnett whose Great Uncle, Kenneth, raced in the 1914 Boat Race before fighting and dying for his country in the First World War.

West strokes one of the two eights with Engelmann setting the pace in the other.

One of Cambridge’s eights will also be coxed by a female for the first time in several years. Rebecca Dowbiggin, a postgraduate student of Anglo-Saxon, Norse and Celtic, coxes the eight featuring James and Engelmann.