Oxford Coxswain refuses to blame E. coli illness after favourites beaten in Boat Race

Cambridge, whose women secured a seventh successive trophy, and men's a second (having won 5 of the last 6), were seen as the underdogs but took the honours on a sunny Easter weekend in West London.

Earlier this week, high levels of E. coli had been found along the course in the River Thames; a virus that can cause a range of serious infections and other side-effects.

The organisers of the race have refused to comment on claims a sickness bug has broken out amongst the Oxford team from high levels of E. coli in the water.

Despite tradition, the winning rowers were not allowed to throw their cox into the river, and instead arranged a clean bucket of water to be dumped on their head.

Oxford's seven seat Leonard Jenkins had earlier revealed to the BBC that he and several crewmates had been plagued by what he branded an E. coli-related illness.

Oxford's cox Will Denegri said, "This week we've had three people who have had to miss sessions because they've had stomach bugs, essentially. Whether that's related to E. coli in the river I don't know, but it's certainly not helped our campaign, and it's a poor excuse.

"It's not an excuse, but it definitely hasn't helped our preparation. We obviously had a bit of a messy start, not the start we wanted. We had a great warm-up, nothing went wrong in the warm-up, so maybe that was not something we were expecting.

"It felt like we never quite got on the rhythm we were hoping to go onto, but at the same time it wasn't terrible. We were doing a decent job. Cambridge I think today were just a quicker group, and that's hard to take."

Cambridge triumphed by three and a half boat lengths in a time of 18 minutes and 56 seconds.

Earlier, Jenkins had told the BBC: "It would have been ideal not to have had so much poo in the water. But that's not to take away from Cambridge."

Denegri was more willing to acknowledge the role flooding at their Wallingford base played in Oxford's preparation, which forced them on several occasions to make the trip to the much-further Caversham Lake.

He said: "It's obviously affected us a lot, especially through February. Caversham Lake is an hour and 10 minutes' drive from Oxford, so spending two and a half hours on the bus every day has definitely interrupted our training."

Cambridge men's have won 87 of The Boat Races, while Oxford have won 81.

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