Rowing: Tough to get a line on form ahead of Gallagher race

Given the on-water rivalry between England's great universities, Oxford's eight will no doubt be aware that they trail Cambridge in at least one respect.

Oxford won their fourth Boat Race in the past five years against Cambridge on the Thames in March, but their light blue adversaries have bragging rights on the winding Waikato River.

Since the Gallagher Great Race, which takes place tomorrow, started in 2002, Cambridge have won two of their four races against Waikato University; Oxford's only previous trip resulted in defeat in 2003.

Tomorrow four of Oxford's winning eight from March will be in the boat, which will be coxed by former New Zealand two-time world champion, Andy Hay.

Oxford's club president and stroke, Colin Smith, admitted that assessing the relative merits of the two crews was tricky ahead of the 4.2km upstream race.

"They've certainly got some good names and guys with world and Olympic experience," Smith, a member of Britain's silver medal-winning eight at the Beijing Olympics last year, said yesterday.

"They'll be in good shape. We don't quite know how fast they'll be, but we don't even know how fast we'll be, so there's no way they'll know that. Everybody's guessing about the opposition."

Waikato's eight is loaded with quality oarsmen, including former world champion and Olympic bronze medallist Nathan Twaddle, world under-23 champions Joseph Sullivan, Dane Boswell, Tobias Wehr-Candler, three-time lightweight world single sculling champion Duncan Grant and Beijing double sculling Olympian Nathan Cohen.

Smith, who has a brother living in Auckland but is racing on the Waikato for the first time tomorrow, described the Boat Race victory as one of the great sporting moments of his life.

"It was immensely satisfying, especially for me as president," he said. "You train blind for six months, not knowing whether what you're doing is good enough. There's an enormous amount of hard work and pride at stake, and it's very public."

And there's a nice little quirk in Hay joining the Oxford crew.

"One of the training videos our coach uses all the time is from the Olympic crew Andy was part of," Smith said. "We often spoke a great deal about the cox in that race and how clear and concise he was with his crew, and we've ended up having that guy come on board with us."