Mondo Knows Facts
The Boat Race was first rowed in 1829
Oxford and Cambridge met at Henley in a challenge between two friends The first race took place on 10 June 1829 over a course at Henley-on-Thames, and Oxford won. The fixture moved to the Tideway in London in 1845 and has been rowed there since, apart from wartime. The course runs about 6.8 kilometres from Putney to Mortlake. It sits in Mondo's sports collection, one of 200 facts that each trace back to the reference below.
Where this comes from
Facts that can change over time are reviewed and updated. If something here looks wrong, Mondo would rather know than be confidently incorrect.
Go further
More facts like this
The sliding seat transformed rowing speedIt let rowers use their legs, adding power that fixed seats could notA rowing eight carries a coxswainThe cox steers, calls the rhythm and is the only person facing forwardOlympic rowing is raced over 2000 metresThe distance was standardised in 1912 and has been used ever sinceTeaching began at Oxford University before the twelfth centuryOxford grew into the oldest university in the English-speaking world by 1096The Oxford Electric Bell has rung since 1840Its clapper has struck two bells billions of times on a dry pile batterySailboats cannot sail straight into the windA yacht heading upwind must tack, turning through the wind in a zigzag
🏅 Sportsfact 120 of 200
← → to keep reading, or swipe
Tags: rowing, oxford, cambridge
The Boat Race was first rowed in 1829: the short answers
- Where does this come from, and can I check it?
- Oxford and Cambridge met at Henley in a challenge between two friends. The figure is taken from The Boat Race, which is linked in full on this page. Every fact on Mondo Knows names its source rather than repeating an unsourced claim.
- Is this really a sports fact?
- Yes. It sits on the Sports shelf, one of 2,600 sourced facts grouped into space, animals, the human body, history, science and more. Category pages collect every fact in the same field.
- What else can I read about it?
- The links under the fact point to a quiz, game, puzzle or calculator on the same subject, and the shelf below shows related facts. The wording here is original, and quoted phrases are marked as quotations.