Downstream

matches at Oxford’. The races
were divided into five heats
of four competitors, and the
banks and towpath were
thronged with up to 3,000
people. At 4 p.m. the starting
gun was fired and the first
men plunged in from a
houseboat stationed at a
bridge just beyond Iffley. The
distance was 400 yards.
While the inhabitants of
Oxford appear to have been
far earlier participants in