Last Sunday, Cambridge made it a clean sweep to win both Boat Races.
On the men’s team, the captain, Ollie Parish, praised the cox, his brother Jasper, for steering the boat into an unorthodox position that won them the race.
Instead of rowing in the faster moving waters, Jasper Parish decided to steer the boat towards Craven Cottage where there were calmer waters.
Despite Oxford remaining close throughout the race, many people credit the cox with the victory.
Ollie Parish said: ‘He steered us out of the rough water and into the flats, slightly less stream there so it should be slower, but he made the call and because the water was so much better out there we went faster, and we won the race in that moment.’
According to Jasper Parish, his brother should also be given a huge amount of credit, exemplified by his handling of a broken rudder twenty minutes before the race began.
He described his brother as ‘ice cold’, as they raced to fix the rudder in time. Eventually the chief coach Rob Baker fixed the issue, and Cambridge did not suffer as a result.
The father of the brothers, Mathew Parish, won the Boat Race himself for Cambridge, and represented Great Britain at the 1996 Atalanta Olympics.
The brothers grew up in London, and attended St Paul’s School for Boys, where they rowed throughout their childhood. Ollie Parish studies Engineering at Peterhouse College, while Jasper Parish studies Computer Science at Clare College.
In the 2022 Boat Race, Jasper Parish had coxed the women’s team to victory by 2¼ lengths.
Meanwhile, older brother Ollie Parish has now raced three times, winning in 2021, but falling short to Oxford in 2022.
He is now in his final year of his degree, so it is likely that this is his last boat race, while Jasper Parish has one year of his degree left.
It marks twenty years ago since two sets of brothers – the Smiths and Livingstons – raced twenty years ago in 2003. On that occasion, they were in different shades of blue, when Oxford won by 30cm – the smallest margin in the history of the race.
Looking further back, the first time brothers won the race together was in 1841 as the Croker brothers won with Cambridge.
Brothers are rare in the Boat Race, so the fact that the Parishes were arguably the two most important people on their team on the day is quite remarkable.
Who will be the next set of brothers, or indeed sisters, to grace the Boat Race?
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