Both the Oxford and Cambridge Blue Boats today put the finishing touches to their preparations for tomorrow’s Boat Race.

Both boats paddled over a reasonably short distance, so as not to tire the athletes too much, with Oxford going through the full race warm-up they will use in just under 24 hours time.

Oxford chose to do a couple of short practice starts near to Putney, which is also where the Race starts. They then paddled up to the Mile Post, where they did a two-minute race-pace piece.

The piece was certainly powerful, with the Dark Blues managing to get out of the blocks, and out of their puddles, fast. .

In their outing, Cambridge paddled beyond Hammersmith Bridge before doing a few practice starts. In contrast to Oxford’s aggressive start, Cambridge’s first few strokes are very fluid, with a powerful but controlled motion to lever the hull off the stakeboat.

Also this afternoon, veteran representatives of both universities raced each other. In a repeat of the spare pair’s race on Wednesday, the Cambridge boat took an early lead off the start, which the Oxford boat could not recover.

Are these results an indication of tomorrow’s outcome? Only time will tell…