Another corker of a summer’s day and another feast of rowing on display for all those lucky enough to spend a day by the Isis. While there was some competition on Friday as the Varsity Twenty20 teed off over in Uni Parks, turnout at riverside was still high, and good spirits were in abundance.

Oriel, Pembroke and Christ Church go into Saturday in that order, still. It didn’t always look likely though, as Christ Church were pushing Pembroke very hard at one point in the race. All eyes to today’s action to see if Oriel can hold onto the headship. Further down the division Magdalen bumped Hertford and Trinity, having bumped into the division by bumping Keble down to Division 2.

In the women’s divisions St. Johns unseated Balliol from their third place, meaning that the Broad Street VIII have been bumped every day so far. Pembroke and Wadham rowed over in first and second.

So there’s plenty to look forward to today, in what promises to be an eventful afternoon’s rowing. Get on down to the river, grab an undercooked hot dog, some overstrength Pimms, and relax in front of the rowing – with the weather like this your tutor will be no doubt doing the same, so there’s nothing to worry about.

The 2011 edition of the Athletics Varsity match was, quite simply, a thrashing, as a very strong Cambridge team steamrollered all before them on their way to a 4-0 victory. The current OUAC committee had put in countless hours of work to ensure this was not repeated and when Cambridge arrived on Saturday morning, slightly delayed to a series of coach-related mishaps, battle commenced as the 138th running of this historic competition, over thirty years older than the modern Olympics, got underway.

In the men’s Blues match, it quickly became clear that the overall standard was very high and the result would go right down to the wire. Ex-CUAC captain Mark Dyble, now running for the Dark Blues, overcame a hamstring strain to heroically win the 100m for the fourth year in succession, while men’s captain Bradford Waldie mastered difficult and gusty conditions to win the pole vault.

Alas, he and newly-elected club President Alex Probodziak, victorious in the javelin, were Oxford’s only winners in the field and Cambridge were able to pick up plenty of points through the strength of their heavy throwers and horizontal jumpers.

On the track, Josh Gilbert was a popular winner in the 110m hurdles, with all four athletes well under last year’s winning time, while fresher Adam McBraida picked himself up after a tumble in the 400m hurdles to win the 200m hurdles in a lightning-quick time, earning him a Full Blue. Other event winners were Chris Morter in the 200m, Tom Frith with an electric last 200m in the 5000m and Caspar Eliot in the 400m. Eliot and high jumper Freddie Hendry were the two non-winners to achieve the Full Blue standard on the day, Eliot in the 400m hurdles, and were unlucky to come up against stronger Cambridge athletes. Hendry in particular, who was defeated by a CUAC high jumper who added 9cm to his personal best in the high jump to eventually clear 2.04m and win athlete of the match for his troubles.

However, their efforts were not quite enough, as the Cambridge men emerged victorious, although some of their showboating during the final relay drew the ire of the crowd, a slight black mark on a day where everything else was contested with excellent spirit.

The women’s Blues match followed similar script, with every point fiercely fought over and every win crucial. Star of the show was incoming women’s captain Nadine Prill who was in imperious form as she took the 100m, 200m and 400m, the 200m in an OUAC record, and she was justly awarded women’s athlete of the match. This match also saw the last outing for OUAC stalwart Clara Blättler, as she looked to add to her five event wins from the last three matches. Unfortunately, a schedule shift due to the tabs’ late arrival saw her favoured pole vault moved to after the 400m hurdles, so although she was victorious in the latter she was unable to reclaim her vaulting title for a record fourth year in a row due to fatigue (trust the author, you can’t do anything after a 400m hurdles), and had to make do with winning the 100m hurdles instead.

Other excellent wins for Joanna Klaptocz in the mile, Jess Chen in the 5000m, Sue Altman in the shot (with Millipedes captain Katie Holder a mere 2cm back in second), Cat Hirst in the javelin and international oarswoman Kathryn Twyman in the steeplechase saw the scores level coming into the final event, the 4x400m relay. The race ebbed and flowed, the lead changing hands several times, and the final changeover saw Nadine receive the baton a good few metres behind the Cambridge runner. There was a brief nervy moment round the back bend where it looked as if the four previous races had left too little in the tank, but on the home straight a stunning kick saw her storm past to take the victory, and with it the match.

The second team matches (Oxford’s Centipedes and Millipedes against Cambridge’s Alverstones and Alligators respectively) were played out to a similarly high standard. In the men’s match, Edoardo Guaschino and Fabe Downs were double event winners on the track, while Jonathan Darby ran an excellent solo 800m, a first lap of under 54 seconds taking him to a huge win and personal best.

Exeter College’s Ralph Eliot was another notable performer, winning the 200m/400m double in faster times than the Blues match in both cases (much to the chagrin of his elder brother), and he was duly awarded the trophy for most notable second team performance. However, OUAC’s weakness in the field was again apparent, not recording a single victory, and the final result again saw Cambridge take a narrow victory by six points.

The women’s second team match saw the only clear cut result of the day. Sports Federation President and last year’s captain Helen Hanstock was ineligible for Blues this year, and instead had to make do with six individual event wins and two second places for the Millipedes. Hockey Blue Lizzie Totten swept the longer sprints, while Clemmie McAteer took the steeplechase in a fantastic time, beating last year’s Blues winner and qualifying her for the National U20s championship. In all, the Millipedes took 15 wins to the Alligators 5, to record a comfortable victory.

So a case of congratulations to the women and commiserations to the men, but thoughts of what might have been were swiftly forgotten in the night that followed. In truth, the turnaround from last year’s record defeats was in itself excellent, and the Men’s Blues can consider themselves unlucky that they didn’t make it a 3-1 overall victory. It will be up to the new committee, led by Prill, Alex Probodziak and Paralympic hopeful Dan Hooker, to nurture the young talent and ensure that the club’s next visit to Cambridge is remembered a lot more fondly than its last.

On the first true day of Oxford’s summer, the Halford Tour Series, the UK’s premier domestic cycling competition, came to town. Before the pros began Oxford and Cambridge’s cycling clubs took the opportunity to stage a Varsity road race through Oxford’s central streets.

You’d be hard-pressed to call it a close-run thing, unfortunately. As the sun beat down, the large and curious crowd, brought to St Giles by the commentators’ PA belting out around the North Oxford area and the enormous fences blocking the road, saw only Light Blue domination. In the final reckoning the top 5 racers were all Tabs.

From the fourth lap the Cambridge strength emerged. Three of their cyclists broke away at that point, led by the hugely impressive Wojciech Szlachta. As the laps went on this intrepid three never looked like being caught.

Behind them there was far more of a contest, the chasing pack’s composition fluctuating throughout the race. As the race-side PA honked out DJ Tiesto’s ‘Adagio for Strings’ cover, for no apparent reason, Sean Ledger of the Dark Blues was working incredibly hard to break out of the pack; at each attempt, however, he was stymied by a Cambridge jersey, having been comprehensively marked by the Cambridge cyclists throughout the race.

The 1.5km course was by now more than familiar to the crowd, bending around in front of St Mary Magdalen church and going up to the fork in St Giles just opposite Taylor’s. This span gave the commentary team plenty of scope for local plugs – they shamelessly pushed both Green’s Café and Najar’s in the hope of freebies – Najar, presumably delighted to hear he was the purveyor of the finest falafel in the world, complied.

With only three laps remaining, the leading trio’s had extended their lead to over thirty seconds. As their impregnable margin became obvious they started chatting to each other and playing about, now each going for the individual win.

In the end it was Szlachta who came first, besting Edmund Bradbury and Toby Weatherall. Oxford had been well beaten, but the character of the team was on display as they kept jostling for position until the brink.

Henry Stapley, a stalwart of OUCC kept out of this race by his economics finals, but still loyally watching on, summed up the day as, ‘a shame, that we couldn’t live up to the fantastic event we’ve hosted. My feelings are disappointment cut with pride.’ They’ll be hoping for better next year

The last two terms have seen women’s and men’s hockey contested individually, with Catz winning the league-cuppers double. In Trinity the competition has continued with mixed cuppers.

Saturday saw the two semi-finals being fought out between Catz and Keble and then Teddy Hall and Worcester. Catz took their semi-final. Keble, in what turned out to be their last match under outgoing captain Vyas Adhikari, went ahead early on, but goals from Chris Lambert and James Arch pulled it back for the Manor Road team. Kat Kaltsas eventually scored the winner for Catz in extra time.

In the final, Teddy Hall, who had beaten Worcester, took the lead quickly, stunning a previously calm Catz, who then lifted themselves to the level of the day. Lofted balls from Ben Thomas and dribbling skills by James Arch now took centre stage, with Arch soon equalising. Each side scored again before the end of the half, as Arch contued to dominate.

At the beginning of the new period the Hall were too much for Catz to deal with and poached a quick goal. But Thomas managed to equalise, dragging Catz back into the equation, with the score now at 3-3. With five minutes left the players, now fatigued, were clearly dreading another extended period of play, and both teams strived eagerly to score the winner.

In the last two minutes Catz managed to capitalise on a break, from a run by Arch, and Lambert slammed it in from close range. The keeper got a hand to it, but unluckily for him the ball bobbled over him into the goal. All that followed was a nervous minute or two for the Catz fans, as the Hall continued to press until the bitter end. As the last minute approached, realisation struck, and all the team pushed forward. The hotly contested match finished 4-3, and Catz’ treble was secured.

In Varsity athletics this year Oxford were the underdogs; we fought hard and were rewarded. The same could just as easily be applied to the state of British athletics.

Although the 2011 Daegu World Athletics Championships saw great success for Team GB, with the best medal haul since 1999, it was by no means as impressive as that statistic suggests. Britain had no representatives in the final of any event from 100m up to 1500m on the men’s side, and 100m up to 800m on the women’s side. As Charles Van Commenee, national head coach at UK Athletics, admitted, a ‘good number’ of his golden generation had underperformed. Jessica Ennis and Phillips Idowu, who went into the championships as favourites for the heptathlon and triple jump respectively, were both soundly beaten into second place by Tatyana Chernova and Christian Taylor. The World Indoor Athletics Champs in Istanbul brought further disappointment for Ennis too: after a two-year undefeated run, she had now lost both her World Outdoor and Indoor titles in the space of seven months. Moreover, as we moved into Olympic year the fortunes of even our best athlete from Daegu, Mo Farah, were taking a turn for the worse. After laughing off a fall at the Boston Mile at the beginning of February, he was beaten in three successive races – over two miles at Birmingham and in the two rounds of the World Indoor Athletics Champs over 3000m. The usually amicable Farah stormed past journalists after his fourth successive defeat and, suddenly, the rather quaint notion that at the start of 2012 Farah had ‘no idea’ when the Olympics started was jumped upon as a sign of over-confidence, as a lackadaisical attitude towards what had been heralded as Britain’s best chance of gold. As The Guardian’s Andy Bull proclaimed in March after Farah’s defeat in Istanbul, ‘[he] looks a shadow of the runner he was last year’. Much like the anti-climax of the England Football team at every world cup since 1966, after a sniff of glory, the media-hype surrounding the Olympics had put British athletes upon a lofty plinth and cracks were now beginning to appear.

Inadvertently though, critics such as Bull were doing UK athletics a favour. After all, the best way to spur on a real champion is to count them out, put their back up against a wall, and make them fight their way back to the top. The previous weekend is a perfect example of this. The three aforementioned athletes all competed this weekend, and all three produced stellar performances to defy their critics. On Friday night, Farah and Idowu were out to show that they are back to their best. At the ‘Oxy High Performance’ meet in California, Farah ran Olympic ‘A’ Standards of 3:34.66 and 13:12.87 to win the 1500m and 5000m in the space of just 90 minutes. On the other side of the world, at the Diamond League Match in Shanghai, 5000m and 10,000m world champion Kenenisa Bekele (arguably Farah’s biggest competition for gold this summer) came a lowly fifth in 13:13 – a time slower than Farah’s second race of the night. Idowu, at the same meeting where Bekele struggled, produced an exemplary performance to win the triple jump with four jumps of over 17 metres. Christian Taylor, on the other hand, the man who beat Idowu to Gold in Daegu, had four no-jumps and didn’t manage a single jump beyond 17 metres. On Sunday, as the varsity athletes were still recovering from their celebrations the night before, Ennis celebrated what was initially thought a new personal best of 12.75 over the 100m hurdles at the Great City Games in Manchester. The event was unfortunately marred by confusion and controversy as it was discovered that only 9 hurdles, not 10, had been put out for the race, thus invalidating the time. Take nothing away from Ennis’ performance though; on a miserable looking day she beat both the Olympic 100m hurdles champion, Dawn Harper, and the World silver medallist, Danielle Carruthers, in one of her seven heptathlon events.

Charles Van Commenee must have woken with a smile on Monday morning as, after a less than ideal winter, his athletes are starting to show the form he hoped for when setting the ambitious target of eight medals at the Olympic Games this summer. As well as Ennis, Farah and Idowu, Andrew Pozzi and Lawrence Okoye recorded Olympic ‘A’ Standard performances in the 110m hurdles and discus respectively, at the Loughborough International meeting, Okoye just 24 hours after breaking the British record in Germany. At the same meeting, Hannah England, silver medallist over 1500m in Daegu, ran her fastest ever opening time over 800m to win by more than a second.

Perhaps I shouldn’t be writing this article at all. Tom Daley’s victory at the European Diving Championships on Sunday is but further testament to the increasingly apparent correlation, across sport as a whole, between media criticism and impressive results after his high-profile telling off by Alexei Evangulov for spending too much time with sponsors and the media. If we want Team GB to achieve Van Commenee’s tough medal target at this summer’s Olympics, now only nine weeks away, perhaps we should stop exhorting our athletes and start invoking the old dating cliché, ‘treat them mean to keep them keen’. We don’t want to risk the state of UK athletics ending up like that of England’s football team.

A second day of glorious sunshine, and some of Oxford’s finest (and some not so fine) athletes pounding their way rhythmically up and down the river. In men’s Division 1 Oriel, after their boat-burning exploits last year, have over Wednesday and Thursday successfully defended their headship. They are being pushed hard though, and Pembroke leading the chasing pack in second place have also rowed over both days.

With Christ Church also sticking in third, these three powerhouses of men’s college rowing look set to repeat their usual battle for dominance as we approach Saturday’s denouement. Nearer the bottom of the division Worcester had a day’s glory, moving up into Division 1 for Thursday until they were bumped back down today.

In the women’s races there’s been more drama at the very top, after Pembroke toppled Balliol from the head of the river yesterday. The woes continued for Balliol’s VIII on Thursday as they were bumped again by Wadham who looked like challenging Pembroke. Keble’s women bumped up into the first division on Wednesday and stayed in by rowing over on Thursday. Further down the ranks Lincoln’s women were imperious, with all four boats bumping, though as one Lincoln rower pointed out their W2 qualified for eights with a time that qualified them for the men’s divisions.

Down the more enthusiastic ends of the divisions things were a bit more lighthearted than during the iron-back, granite-quad races towards the end of the days. Fewer genuine beer boats this year than last, but there were plenty of lighthearted crews in for the fun of it. One VIII on Wednesday were bumped within three seconds after a oarsman’s seat fell off, and there was plenty more where this came from.

So after two days Eights looks set to be another sterling feather in the cap of this Oxford summer. Oriel have dominated in the male races, but onlookers have doubted whether they’re up to the calibre of previous years’ eights. It’s far from unthinkable that Pembroke might do the double.

So plenty to think about, and hopefully things will crescendo in time for Saturday, when the waterside will be completely rammed with people desperate to get their Oxford experience. After the early term we’ve had they deserve it.