Six months' hard yakka pays off as Cambridge beat Oxford in Boat Race

For the first time in a long time, the two Boat Race crews will be waking late this morning, their heads fogged with very different kinds of hangover. Soon the sign-painters will go to work at Cambridge's Goldie boathouse, marking out the names of this year's crew in curling gold script, alongside the Blues from the last 155 years. The rowers will be enjoying the sweet satisfaction of victory. Oxford's athletes will wake to regret and recrimination, each wondering what went wrong and who was to blame. The press and public dip into the Boat Race for one day a year. For the crews and their coaches, it is a full-time obsession. "The race," as Oxford's Sean Bowden put it, "has been won in the last six months." Moments after watching his latest charges lose, Bowden's mind was turning to September, when another batch of 30 or so hopefuls will walk into his boathouse to stake their claim for a place for 2011. "You're always thinking, 'Was there something we did wrong in our preparations?'" said Bowden, who is the most successful Boat Race coach of the modern era. His record is now seven wins from 12 races. "You look back and it was a close race, therefore we must have had a chance to win and we'll look back in our preparation and see what we have to re-examine and focus on for next year." Bowden will be fortunate if some of his crew from this year return for another try. The Cambridge cox, Ted Randolph, reckoned his boat had a real advantage, as "so many of our guys have experienced defeat". Most of Oxford's crew will disperse to mull over the pain of losing, which is likely to linger for a lifetime. The 600 or so strokes it takes the boat to complete the course are the result of six months of 6am starts; of over 1,600km on ergometer machines, enough to take a man from London to Lisbon; of 300 afternoon hours practising on the water. Cambridge's coach, Chris Nilsson, actually tempered his rigorous regime, allowing his oarsmen an extra 30 minutes in bed each morning. He said that the biggest lesson he had learned in 2009, his first year as coach, was that he had been over-working his crew. "They can call us lazy if they like," said the Cambridge president, Deaglan McEachern, "but they'll also have to call us winners." And that tag is what makes the six months' hard yakka worthwhile. For Bowden the cycle will soon begin all over again, but for most of the men in his boat this chapter of their lives closed when they trailed home second on Saturday.