Your punbelievable guide to Boat Race alternatives

It’s that time of the year again: sixteen Olympic rowers who decide they want to be students for a bit and Claire Balding, invade our screens and our living rooms for an hour or so.

When Cambridge inevitably lose (GDBOh no), you may be thinking it was all a waste of time and you should have been revising Russian grammar, or whatever it is you study. This needn’t be the case when there are many pun inspired activities you can try.

Firstly you may have heard of the Goat Race, held at midday in Spitalfields City Farm in London. Buy your tickets to see hairy Billies race through the streets, and possibly some goats.

If that animal inspired fun was not enough, you could try and track down some ermines to line your graduation gown. That’s right, a Stoat in a Winter Coat Race (don’t worry the puns get better).

There are goats. And they are racing. Inspired. Just inspired.

Animals may not be your thing, so there is always the Oxford and Cambridge Bloat Race. Challenge someone to an eating competition and decide the winner by comparing gut girths before and after. For those of you who like double puns and Scottish independence, you could combine it with the Oat Race.

Since Cambridge is likely to come second at this historic paddling contest, it is worth trying to big up your university before it all goes south. Find an Oxford student and instigate a Gloat Race. Lines like “And how many Nobel prizes?”, or “You’re just upset because you came second in the ratings again” are likely to counter the half hearted boasting from the other corner.

Mate, do you even physics?

For those who are lovers of student politics (ahem) there is always the CUSU Vote Race. Whoever votes for the president first gets a free placard to brandish at protests! Okay Flick, I tried, but I don’t think it’s going to work this time. Maybe next year.

Rowers have a lot in common with milkmen: they get up early and… er… well to be honest they just get up early. Anyway, for the non crew rowers there is the Float Race, where milkmen from both bastions of academia converge in the suburbs of North London to race at the crack of dawn.

This article is quite low-brow, so if you want to take it up a few notches on the pretention Richter scale, the Prickter scale, you can always have a Quote Race. You will have bundles of laughs when your friend Mungo Montfort de Pheasant gets his Socrates confused with his Plato. Ha, what a twat.

If Mungo is not the academic type, you could always help out the servents at his Castle with the Dig a Moat Race.

Count your blessings: if you were at Oxford you would think that this was Mary Berry in Las Vegas.

Some of you may be at your grandparents’ house on the auspicious day. If so, go to the cupboard and dust off a couple of videos, then I am sure you could have a Murder She Wrote Race (the puns are getting desperate now). Whoever doesn’t gnaw their own arm off out of boredom wins.

Since the Tab is mainly run by arts students, I thought a nod to the hard working NatScis, staring at embryos in part 1A Cells, would be nice, with the Zygote Race. Xenopus laevis or tropicalis ? Put their fertilised ova in the Thames and find out.

In this modern day, who even cares who wins the boat race? It’s just sport after all, it’s not as if it matters. For these people, there is the I don’t care a mote race. Not even capitalised or a real race. Whoever is the last to know which university won is the victor.

OMG a boat. I care so much. Look at it, being a boat. Amazing.

Well, when you watch Claire Balding try not to insult the Oxford cox as they toss him into the murky sewer stained river, remember you could have had more fun with puns. We may not be as good at sport as Oxford, but by God we know how to rhyme obscure words with boat.