Boat Race 2013: London's home boy wants to ruin the American dream

Henry Fieldman and Oskar Zorrilla are miles apart in terms of Boat Race heritage but the coxes are now rivals
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Nik Simon21 March 2013

Never before have two coxes had such similar ambitions born out of such different circumstances. While one grew up on the banks of the Thames and could hear the Boat Race crowds lining its towpath roaring the crews on, his American opponent had seen nothing more than photographs of the famous battle until his visit to London from America four years ago.

But the huge Transatlantic divide will be reduced to a fraction of strokes when Cambridge University’s Henry Fieldman from Barnes, London lines up against Oxford University’s Oskar Zorrilla from Denver, Colorado in the 2013 BNY Mellon Boat Race next week.

“Coming to do the Boat Race is like me coming back home,” said Fieldman, a 25-year-old psychology and education student. “There have been people coming from all over the world to race in my home and now I’m having the chance to race against them, it is pretty special.”

While Zorrilla has had a far different introduction to the Boat Race than his adversary, the former employee of the Federal Reserve in San Francisco is well aware of the event’s grandiose history.

“When you start coxing, it’s one of the first things you hear about, this legendary race on the Thames between Oxford and Cambridge,” said Zorrilla, a 25-year-old economics student. “I probably heard about the Boat Race within a week of starting coxing. Even in America it’s a big deal.

“The closest thing in the States is the Harvard-Yale Race. For us in America they’re ancient universities but not on the same level as Oxford and Cambridge and rowing is obviously a much bigger sport here than it is in America. People don’t line the banks of the river for the Harvard-Yale Race. That’s the closest thing by comparison but it’s just a completely different animal.”

Coxes are responsible for communicating the race plan, motivating the rowers and steering the difficult Thames path.

The most successful are lightweight and short: Fieldman and Zorrilla both measure 5ft 4ins and weigh in at 8st 5lbs and 8st 1lb. To put this into perspective, the heaviest stroke in this year’s race, Oxford’s Malcolm Howard, is 17st 1lb.

Fieldman and Zorrilla’s potential as coxes was spotted by secondary school coaches. “A teacher started talking to me and at the end he made a suggestion,” said Zorrilla, who was 15 when he first coxed. “I thought he was going to tell me off that my shirt wasn’t tucked in or my tie wasn’t straight but he asked me if I had ever considered doing crew. I was like ‘I don’t even know what that is’.”

But Zorrilla took up his teacher’s offer and never looked back, although his initial thought when he arrived at his first session was: “They give that spiel to every little person they see.”

Fieldman became a cox 10 years ago although the decision was as much a ploy to avoid rugby as it was to take up the sport that he had watched for years from Hammersmith Bridge.

And he is not the only cox in the Fieldman family. Younger brother Tom, a medical student at Cambridge, led the reserve Goldie crew in 2011.

“I always thought it [rowing] was kind of cool,” said Fieldman, a former pupil at Latymer Upper School in Hammersmith. “When I went to school in the winter the choice of sport was either rowing or rugby and I’m pretty short so I just kind of fell into rowing and into the coxing scheme.”

A successful boat must have confidence in their coxswain and these coxes are not short on belief.

When asked if his experience on the Thames will give Cambridge the advantage, Fieldman replied: “Yes. Yes, I do. I know the guy that’s teaching him how to handle the river and he’s taught me in the past, I know he’s very good. I’m sure Oskar will be very well prepared and will be a foe to be respected but I definitely have an advantage in terms of my experience on the Tideway.”

Zorrilla, though, believes his crew’s months of preparation will put them in equally good stead for the race on March 31.

“You race what you practice,” he said. “You’re not going to show up on race day and pull out a magnificent plan out of a hat. Rowing well is a prerequisite to rowing hard.”

BNY Mellon, sponsor of the Boat Race, invites you to show support for either light or dark blue at whichblueareyou.com — you could win £30,000! The Newton Women’s Boat Race is on Sunday at 3pm on Dorney Lake, Windsor. www.newton.co.uk

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