Boat Race 2025: Cambridge University Boat Club’s Annie Wertheimer charts her journey from disastrous first rowing session to making Blue Boat

It would be fair to say that it was far from love at first sight for Annie Wertheimer and rowing.

Growing up in Connecticut, Wertheimer was an avid swimmer.

However, as she moved up the education ladder, her high school insisted that students tried a new sport at the start of each season.

A sprained ankle in her first training session put paid to volleyball, yet her first experience in a rowing boat was even more disastrous.

“Swimming was all I knew. I missed parties, birthdays, Bar Mitzvahs, play dates with my friends just so I could compete at all of these swim meets across different states,” said Wertheimer, who is doing an MPhil in Arts, Creativity and Education at St Edmund’s.

“But my school had a rule about pupils trying new sports. I got injured during volleyball and my sister was rowing, so I thought I’d try that.

“But after the first practice I got into the car to go back to the dining hall and I was sobbing. I hated it.

“I was so cold, it was raining and we were out on the water. I couldn’t feel my fingers and everything was soaked.

“It was instant hate. I remember how much my hands hurt and I didn’t understand anything that was said.

“It made me so miserable and I was adamant that I wasn’t going back to practice.”

And yet despite her insistence, Wertheimer did return. And to her great surprise, rowing became her greatest passion.

She remains obsessed with the technical aspects of the sport, as well as relishing the camaraderie.

“The next day it was sunny, so that helped! But ultimately my parents said to me that I’d made a commitment and I needed to follow that up,” she added.

“I went back and once I got the hang of the different parts of the boat and how technical it was, I started to really like it.

“When you made one of those technical changes and it worked, you could feel the instant pick up in the boat.

“And then you’ve got your team-mates saying how good that session felt – it’s quite addicting.

“You get an immediate validation. You think ‘oh, that’s working, I’m going to stick with it’.

“I loved the team aspect of it, much more than swimming. In swimming you earn points for your team, but you’re not doing it together.

“You just race your own event and in practice you’re doing different sorts of training. You’ve got distance swimmers, sprinters and someone is focused on backstroke.

“Whereas, in rowing, everyone is doing the exact same thing and that allows you to buy-in to that team environment.”

Even so, aspirations of the Boat Race had not entered Wertheimer’s thought process until as recently as 2022 when she was encouraged to watch the event on television.

She was instantly captivated – and now she is excited at the prospect of being ‘one of those wild women that does that insane race’ on Sunday.

“Those girls looked so cool, they were so tall, they were so muscular and they looked so fierce,” said Wertheimer, who will sit in the four seat on race day.

“It looked so epic. When I watched rowing at the Olympics, you never get that behind-the-scenes coverage. You don’t see them walking out, you don’t get too much information about the history of it. The Boat Race felt so personal.

“And as I started to progress in the sport, I thought maybe I could be one of those wild women that does that insane race. Maybe that could be me.

“I was looking at these fierce ladies and all I could think was how bad ass they were! I just thought – why not me?

“Moving across the world to study at this amazing university with these amazing coaches and row with the best of the best, I’m already so proud of myself and everyone in the boat. It already feels like I have won.

“I know it sounds so cheesy, but it’s so true. In 2022 when I first watched the Boat Race, I’d never have believed this could happen.”