richsport.co.uk

As one who has endured thousands of utterly anodyne post-event press con­fer­ences, the reactions of the various par­tic­i­pants to the extra­or­di­nary events of yesterday’s Boat Race were genuinely remark­able. Particularly the six tweets posted by Oxford rower William Zeng, which read as follows:

When I missed your head with my blade I knew only that you were a swimmer, and if you say you are a protestor then/no matter what you say your cause may be, your action speaks too loudly for me to hear you. I know, with immediate emotion, exactly what you/were protest­ing. You were protest­ing the right of seventeen young men and one woman to compete fairly and honourably/to demon­strate their hard work and desire in a proud tradition./You were protest­ing their right to devote years of their lives, their friend­ships and their souls to the fair pursuit of the joys/and the hardships of sport. You, who would make a mockery of their ded­i­ca­tion and their courage, are a mockery of a man.

I have some sympathy for Trenton Oldfield’s beliefs. But knowing a little about the work those 18 young people had put in for so long, couldn’t he have found another way?

William Zeng’s Twitter account is @zengscape.