Torpids 2025 wrapped up last Saturday (1 March), as Wolfson M1 and Pembroke W1 took their respective headships, whilst Wolfson M3 and the mighty Univ M2 mounted successful spoons campaigns in the half divisions that ran. Complete with punts darting between Boathouse Island and Univ College Boathouse, interesting lines through the gut, the eternal menace of swans, and some successful blades campaigns, the 169th Torpids was a resounding success, if we ignore everything which went wrong.
That paragraph was a mess of acronyms and abbreviations which make sense only after being bellowed at by grown men like you’re a misbehaving boiler because you’ve been ridiculously stupid on the river at 6.30 a.m. I’m going to try to save you from that enlightening experience and break down what exactly Torpids is, why we do it, and why it’s actually fun.
Torpids is four days of bumps racing, but contrary to popular Oxford belief, there’s more than just one meaning for that word. Boats aim to literally bump into the stern of the boat ahead of them, row past them, or get the boat ahead to concede. It’s a competition between the finest specimens each college boat club can snatch from their beds and convince that 7 a.m ergs are fun. Almost all colleges have a boathouse, or share one with another college. There are normally 13 boats in each division: 12 contenders from that division, and the top boat of the previous division, who as ‘sandwich boat’ have the opportunity to bump the crew ahead and ‘bump up’ to the higher division, for example from Men’s Second division to Men’s First.
I can’t talk at length about bumping–my boat didn’t, not helped by having my fat arse in 6 seat–but if you bump everyday without being bumped, you get blades. These celebratory, ornamental oars contain the names of your crew, weight/height (depending on if it’s a men’s or women’s), the event you bumped in and, importantly, the crews you bumped. In 60 years time, as the cumulative effect of years of reels has left your brain but a pea, you can still take solace in the fact, for example, that you bumped Corpus. If you retain headship (stay at the top of the running order, ‘the river’, without being bumped), you get blades. If you have the dubious honour of staying at the bottom of the river, or getting bumped everyday, you get a spoon. It’s just a wooden spoon, but in that 20 grams of ply is emotional damage a tutor could only dream of.
Enough about what Torpids is—why do we do it? It’s certainly not for shits and giggles: talk to any cox ahead of their event, or just some of Univ’s, and you’ll receive a swift and unsentimental invitation to jog on as they’re busy locking in. The river can be uncooperative at the best of times, jumping from a dark blue to red flag a day ahead of this year’s Torpids. This meant the river had gone from challenging but manageable, to a state where, in a non-competitive context, no one would be on the water. You’d be forgiven for thinking some coxes are actively attempting to get themselves, and their boat they’re steering, in serious danger. Four days without essay work has left my schedule in shambles, and put my friends in more strenuous courses into what could be liberally described as a spiral.
But there’s camaraderie in a boat. It’s forged through 6 a.m treks to the Boathouse, collective work on the ergs, in the weights room, and on the river; through snoozes on the way back from competitions or training sessions when the Cherwell can’t be rowed on, or from the laughter ringing from a kitchen when carb-loading the night before a race; sharing the sunrise on the river, or admiring the tones of sunset when storing the boat away. It’s a bond forged not just through shared interests, but a mutual stake in each other’s success. You can have the most athletic person in the world in a boat: if their form, or anyone else’s, is off, the boat won’t go as fast as it could. If someone doesn’t make the river outing, no one goes out. Rowing bucks the trend of an increasingly individualistic world by binding every member of the boat to one another, such that you’re not just working to make yourself proud, but to encourage other members of the boat to work hard as well. Personally, I’ve got two members of my boat whose commitment to training is an inspiration. Whilst their rowing is vastly superior to my own, regardless of what boats we’re assigned to in future, I have a benchmark I want to do right by.
Ultimately, Torpids is one of Oxford’s many traditions that have lasted the more-than-millenia that this university has existed. Born from the desire for contests between only a few boat clubs, it is now part of a rowing ecosystem that nurtures school boy rowers and novices alike in a culture of competition and friendship. It is vital to getting through the mid-term Blues that blanket this university like a winter fog, and we should keep it going for as long as bumps racing is possible on the Cherwell.