Boris To Present The Boat Race Trophy

From The Boat Race website, HTBS is borrowing the following announcement:

The Boat Race Company Ltd. is pleased to announce that the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will be attending this year’s Race and will be presenting The Xchanging Boat Race Trophy to the winning crew.

Having attended Oxford University himself, Mr Johnson has always followed the Race, and now as Mayor of London has an even greater appreciation of the significance of this historic event. “London is rightly recognised as the home of sport. We invented or codified most of the major games played across the globe and in this Olympic year we have a wonderful opportunity to remind the world of that role. The Boat Race reflects that proud tradition, saluting our heritage and showcasing the best of our natural talent - raw strength, energy, skill and determination. I look forward to joining thousands along the banks of the Thames to witness one of the most popular spectacles of the year and get a taste of the quality that will hopefully deliver a crop of medals this summer. I am not unbiased in this role but I wish both crews the best in reminding the world of British talent and London's big year.”

The 2012 Xchanging Boat Race will be staged on Saturday, 7 April at 2:15pm. The 158th Boat Race will be screened live on BBC 1.

HTBS also wrote about Boris Johnson last year.

Boris Will Address The Blues

On Monday 7 March, the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson, will address the Oxford and Cambridge crews who will be rowing in The Boat Race on 26 March. The oarsmen will weighed in at City Hall and the Mayor will acknowledge that it is 175 years since the university crews first raced on the River Thames in London. Read the press release here.

Who is Boris Johnson, a Non-Brit may ask? Boris Johnson, a Conservative politician, is a former MP (Member of Parliament) for Henley-on-Thames who has been Mayor of London since May 2008. He studied at Eton College and Balliol College, Oxford, and at neither school he rowed, which was obvious when he, as the MP for Henley, opened the Upper Thames RC's new boathouse in 2005 (see picture below from the 'Tideway Slug').

He is one of the few British politicians known around the country on a first-name basis, and his unruly hair and far from tactful outspokenness are some of his trademarks, as is his badly tied neck-ties, I think. In Britain, he is either loved, or regarded as a babbling fool who constantly puts his foot in his mouth. Boris has worked as a journalist for the Conservative Daily Telegraph, where he still has a column. Between 1999 and 2005 he was the editor of the weekly magazine The Spectator.