Melbourne University clean sweep in Boat Race

This is the third year of the reinstated Australian Boat Race and the Melbourne crews made the most of their home-course advantage with the 4.2km race taking place on Melbourne's training grounds, the Yarra River.

The race is a feature of the long-standing rivalry between the University of Melbourne and the University of Sydney rowing clubs which date back to racing in the 1860s. Since the reinstatement of the race, the women's eight has been added.

This year's rivalry played out on a winding part of the Yarra River which included five bridges to navigate. The women's race had Melbourne push into the lead and record a comfortable win of about four lengths.

The men's race was a different story. Both crews were relatively even for the first stages of the race. But as both coxswains wanted to take advantage of the better flowing water in the middle of the course, there was some aggressive steering which saw a number of oar clashes.

Then at about the 3km mark, there was a clash that saw one of Sydney's crew members lose an oar. By the time Sydney recovered, Melbourne had pushed into the lead. Sydney were never able to catch up and Melbourne took the win by about two boat lengths.

Each crew can have up to two alumni and all other rowers in the boat must be currently enrolled and studying at their respective university.
The Melbourne women's crew brought in alumni World Champion and Olympic medallist Kim Crow. Crow sat behind Olympian Phoebe Stanley with the remainder of the crew a mixture of under-19 and under-23 representatives. For the men Melbourne had London Olympian Josh Booth with two Olympic medallists brought in to fill the alumni spots – David Crawshay and Cameron McKenzie-McHarg. The crew also included James Marbug who raced at both the Beijing and London Olympics.

Sydney University competed with fewer big names. Multiple national team member, Fergus Pragnell was brought into the men's crew as an alumni rower along with Cameron Girdlestone. A number of the remaining crew had been under-23 representatives. The women's crew in comparison contained no internationally known names.  

The race was watched by spectators along the river course and also on a big screen set up near the finish with another big screen in Melbourne's central square, Federation Square.

The Australian Boat Race rotates between Sydney Harbour and the Yarra River with the 2014 race returning to Sydney.

For more information: www.australianboatrace.com