INTERVIEW:Some 17 million people worldwide will watch today's boat race in London between Cambridge and Oxford – and one Irishman will be pulling his weight and more for the Oxford 'Blue' boat team. Martin Walsh talks to MARK HENNESSY, London Editor
PASSING FULHAM Football Club early on a Sunday morning, the Oxford boat crew, including 24-year-old Dubliner Martin Walsh, are skimming on the low Thames water, rhythmically moving together as one. Within seconds, the eight-strong crew and cox face into a strong headwind, with small whitecaps appearing on the surface, while the effects of the morning tide create sharp currents. “The spoon of the oar came out a little quickly there,” says full-time coach Sean Bowden from an accompanying motor-driven scout boat, though to all but the most expert observer the movements appeared perfectly in harmony.
It is on such perfection that the outcome of the 156th Boat Race, taking place from Putney Bridge in London today between Oxford and Cambridge universities, will hinge.
“All it takes is one guy to have a slightly lower handle than the others and that will push the boat down on one side of the water,” explains Walsh, moving his hand, as he does so, to illustrate. “One guy to move slightly quicker out of the bow too quick and he will create a rushing sensation that spreads throughout the boat, or one guy goes in too early so it creates heaviness for other seats.
“It’s all about trying to be precise, on time and be as tight-knit as you can. When you don’t have that, the boat can be a lonely place to be and you are really working hard and you are getting no reward. It is not there to make you feel good about yourself. It will punish you for not doing it right.”
Walsh was born in Rathgar, Co Dublin, and is the son of two doctors, Martin and Liz Walsh, both now retired. He is an Irish international who learned his craft with the Neptune Rowing Club in Islandbridge on the Liffey, and has rowed on Boat Race day for Oxford’s second crew, but this will be his first and only appearance in Oxford’s “Blue” boat.
“It was a dream of mine ever since I have been watching it. I grew up watching it and I always wanted to be part of it,” he says. Everything about Walsh is quiet and modest, at least on land, but backed by a steely determination: “I can hold my own as much as I can; I definitely count myself lucky to be in the company of some of the guys here.” However, no one makes the Boat Race without being exceptional: 40 Oxford students began training from the first days of the college year for the honour of becoming an Oxford Blue – an honour awarded only to the eight who make the first boat.
Each day begins at 6am, with 70 minutes on rowing machines, before three hours of study for his Masters in orthopaedic surgery; this is followed by four more hours at the club’s training centre in Wallingford, outside Oxford, and then more study before bed.
In his first two years in Oxford, Walsh missed out on the first team. “This year I am in. All the hard work has paid off. What’s changed? I am physically bigger. I am a bit stronger. My rowing-machine performance in tests is better. I weigh a bit more. I have put on a bit more muscle bulk.”
The Oxford group has gathered at the Westminster School Boat Club on the Embankment in Putney at 8am, as it has done every weekend morning for months, learning the secrets of the river. Just a few dozen walkers, runners and cyclists pass by in the early sunshine, but on race day the Middlesex and Surrey banks of the river will be thronged with up to 300,000 people, while 17 million more are expected to watch on television.
In the club house, the crew, which includes youthful Olympic veterans, prepares quietly. As his teammates mill about, Walsh speaks softly, uncomfortable talking about himself. However, his passion for a sport that few share is, when it shows itself, intense. When everything on the water is right, “it is fantastic. It just feels like the boat is skimming on the water. It is clean and you can hear the water rushing underneath,” he says, in a rush.
So far, much of the attention has centred on fellow crewmates Tyler and Cameron Winklevoss. (The pair are twins who received $65 million compensation from Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg in a legal battle about the ideas at the heart of the social networking website.)
Life outside, though, rarely intrudes into the bubble that is the Oxford boat crew: “It is a world inside a world. Sometimes, you’d think it might lead to conflict, but what you find is that people verge away from those who aren’t their thing.
“People say, ‘I am friendly with that guy, or friendlier with someone else’. It is unspoken. No one dislikes each other. For five months of the year you are battling each other all the time. It is interesting how it all just comes together,” says Walsh.
This is a brotherhood of pain: “It hurts a lot, a lot. You’d be throwing up. That’s quite common, particularly in a race like this. After a mile your body is telling you to stop and you have another three-and-a-quarter to go.”
Oxford has won seven out of the last 10 races, all of them under the watchful eye of Sean Bowden. This year, Cambridge, so often the bridesmaid, has vowed that it will be first past the finish near Chiswick Bridge. “You have got to respect the opposition and the best way you can respect them is to beat them by as much as you can. Show them the respect that they deserve by hammering them and show that you have given them your best and they got your respect from it. That is the way that I’d look at it,” Walsh says.
Interest from home is building: “It has been really, really good over the past few weeks. I have got a strange amount of support from people I wouldn’t have thought would have dropped letters and emails and texts. It has been really nice.”
Walsh began his rowing career by accident at the age of 10, when he was brought along to Neptune’s Islandbridge clubhouse by his parents when his older brothers, James and John, tried the sport. “My parents couldn’t leave me at home. Otherwise, someone would have had to look after me. I decided, ‘while I’m here, I may as well . . .’
“My initial feelings were that I didn’t really see the point of it. I would rather be playing rugby. Being in Belvedere, the only thing I wanted to do was rugby. But the more and more I did it, I got into the competitive side of it that I liked and I kept going. My brothers stopped and I kept going.”
His eldest sister, Louise, does not understand the sport’s attractions for him. “She thinks I should be working. My other sister, Kate, is quite into it. I think [Louise] will probably watch it on TV and think ‘Oh, maybe I should have gone’.
“We have spoken about it, but we just try and avoid that conversation. It only leads to tension. It’s quite Irish,” he says, with an affectionate chuckle.
However, the real world will soon intrude. Walsh returns to Ireland this summer after six years in the UK, to pursue a postgraduate medical degree from next autumn.
“I think it is the right move for me to go home. I think I can get a little bit lost over here and behave in a manner that is not real, that is not right to continue. Not that I am doing anything [daft].
“I just feel that with my ambitions I need to bring myself right down to earth. This is the real world now and this is how you need to behave and that is the way that I want to be.”
Each weekend, Walsh stays with friends in Twickenham: “I just hang out with them. They give me a good break. Sometimes you need a break because Oxford is like a bubble. The only way that you see the recession exists in Oxford is that the main chain stores have closed down. Otherwise, it is a student town, it is a tourist town, it is always going.
“I remember one of my friends asking me when I first came back from Oxford: ‘What’s it like being back in reality?’ He is so right, it is just not real. Amazing buildings, but not real.”
However, Walsh’s idea of “hanging out” is not one shared by many other 24 year olds: “I would be in bed by 9.30pm or 10pm every night at the latest, preferably at 9.30pm.
“Should I be having a bit more fun? I don’t feel I am missing out on anything. It is kind of weird when I see my friends going out for a beer; I don’t go, ‘Oh, I’d love to be doing that’. It doesn’t even faze me.
“It has become normal to me now, that this is the way that things are and this is the way that my life is.” Even given this level of dedication, Walsh, like the others in the crew, is given no special favours by tutors.
While 300,000 people will throng the riverbank on race day, there is one man Walsh is particularly seeking to impress – his former Islandbridge coach, Walter Maguire. “I wouldn’t be here today if it wasn’t for him. There is no question in my mind about that. The man was just incredible. He did everything. He just pushed me so hard. At times we had our disagreements because I just thought he was mad what he was making me do.
“But he is responsible for everything. He is responsible for making me into a racer, a determined guy, stubborn at times. It is all down to him. It is kind of weird; I always look to him, even now, for the seal of approval.”
Now retired and living in Rathcormac, Co Cork, Maguire is sparing with his praise. “He’s some man, a real Corkman, tough,” adds Walsh. “The stuff he made us do as young fellows, if you asked me to do them now, I’d say, ‘no, that’s ridiculous’.” The ridiculous included weight sessions at 8pm and two 10-mile runs every week, along with meticulous attention to his charges’ statistics on rowing machines. “I know my parents spoke to him last week. He said, ‘I don’t usually watch that race’. I wasn’t surprised, but he said, ‘I’ll watch it this year’.
“I am still looking for the seal of approval. Hopefully, this race I will get it. He is someone who is quite key to me. It would be nice to hear from him,” says Walsh, looking, for a moment, both boy and man.
Coverage of today’s boat race starts on BBC1 at 3.10pm
