The day of the 153 Boat Race – sponsored by Xchanging – has arrived – and the bookies have Cambridge down as firm favourites to secure their 79th victory.

Ladbrokes, Paddy Power and William Hill have Cambridge at 15/8-on to win, with Oxford at 11/8, while Coral are offering 7/4-on for the Light Blues and 5/4 for the Dark Blues.

Cambridge may be favourites, but the bookies don’t think they’ll win it by the proverbial country mile. Labrokes are offering 5/1 for a Cambridge win by 2 ¼ to 3 lengths, and 100/1 for a Cambridge win by 9 1/4 to 10 lengths. Odds of 80/1 are offered for a win by between 8 ¼ to 9 lengths or by more than 10 ¼ lengths.

Ladbrokes are offering 9/1 for an Oxford win of between ¼ and 2 lengths, 8/1 for a win by 2 ¼ to 3 lengths and 125/1 for an Oxford victory by more than 10 ¼ lengths.

Paddy Power are offering 11/8 for a Cambridge win by more than two lengths, and 5-2 for an Oxford victory by the same margin.

As usual, the bookies are offering one or two more interesting bets too. You can get 25/1 with William Hill for either or both crews to sink and 4/1 on either crew beating the course record of 16 minutes 19 seconds, set by Cambridge in 1998.

Ladbrokes and Coral are both offering 100/1 for a dead heat, while William Hill are slightly more generous at 130/1.

The 153rd Boat Race gets underway at 4.30pm on Saturday (7th April). It is being screened live by ITV – which achieved an audience of more than 7 million viewers for the 2006 Boat Race.