Boat Race 2025: Team GB Olympic gold medal winner Tom Ford latest Cambridge University Boat Club rower to be barred from racing against Oxford University Boat Club
A fourth Cambridge University Boat Club athlete has been barred from featuring in next month’s Boat Race.
Earlier this week it was ruled that Matt Heywood, Kate Crowley and Molly Foxell were all ineligible to represent Cambridge when they reignite their rivalry with Oxford on 13 April due to their status as post-graduate teacher training students.
It was a decision that angered Cambridge rowers past and present – and that is likely to have been intensified by the news that Tom Ford will also not be able to take his place in Blue boat.
Ford, who stroked Great Britain’s men’s eight to gold at the Paris Olympics, started a Masters of Business Administration course at Cambridge University last year.
But despite having been in the stroke seat for some of the recent preparation races, confirmation has now come that the 32-year-old will have to miss the big day as part of a ruling – which was implemented in 2021 – aimed to crackdown on elite-level ‘ringers’ entering the Boat Race in the wake of double-Olympic champion James Cracknell winning the race in 2019 with Cambridge. The new rule precludes any athlete who started an undergraduate course more than 12 years earlier.
A statement from The Boat Race company read: “In the case of Tom Ford, he matriculated in 2011 and is therefore ineligible to race according to the rules agreed jointly by the two clubs.
“As an Olympic gold medallist, Tom brings significant experience and learnings to the Cambridge squad. It is course unfortunate that he is not eligible to race according to the rules jointly agreed by the two clubs, but this was known to both Tom and CUBC at the time of his admission to the university last summer.”
There has also been further suggestions that this year’s Cambridge president Lucy Havard and the 2024 president Jenna Armstrong are also facing potential exclusions due to when they started their undergraduate degrees.
