arrested on suspicion of a public order offence.
Mr Oldfield The two rowing crews were forced to stop after them man,
named by Sky sources as Trenton Oldfield, a director of a group called
This is Not a Gateway, swam out into the Thames.
The blades of both team's oars narrowly missed the swimmer as they
passed either side of him.
He was taken away by police after being pulled from the river. He is
being held at a West London police station while inquiiries are
carried out, Scotland Yard said.
In a post on This Is Not A Gateway's Twitter feed, its co-cordinator
Deepa Naik said: "Deepa here... finding out just like you. Yes is
Trenton."
Writing before the protest on his blog Elitism Leads To Tyranny, Mr
Oldfield talked about why he was carrying out his "performance on the
Thames".
"This is a protest, an act of civil disobedience, a methodology of
refusing and resistance," he wrote.
He described the Boat Race as "a public event, for and by the elites
with broader social relations aims".
Cambridge won the 158th running of the Boat Race after it was
restarted from near Hammersmith Bridge after about 30 minutes. Oxford
broke an oar allowing their rivals to win back the title.
President of the Oxford University Boat Club Karl Hudspith blamed Mr
Oldfield after the defeat.
He wrote on Twitter: "To Trenton Oldfiled (sic); my team went through
seven months of hell, this was the culmination of our careers and you
took it from us."
The crews were neck-and-neck when the race was stopped between the two
and three-mile markers of the four-and-a-quarter mile race between
Putney and Mortlake.
Cambridge team president David Nelson said: "There was a lot of to-ing
and fro-ing up to the (Chiswick Eyot) island and suddenly there was
some yelling about an obstruction in the water.
"The next thing I know I see a guy's head between the two boats - and
there's 10 or 20 boats following us, so that guy was in serious
strife."
Umpire John Garrett said it was Olympic gold medalist rower Sir
Matthew Pinsent, who was assistant umpire, who spotted the swimmer.
"He basically said, 'There's something in the water, there's something
in the water'. He thought it was some debris and then we realised that
it was actually a swimmer.
"We weren't sure what was going to happen, whether he was going to get
out of the way in time and then it was quite clear he was just waiting
for the boats to come across him so I had to stop the race and
restart."
The unidentified man, wearing a wetsuit, ducked under the water as the
two boats converged on him.
Witness Anne Gill said: "The lifeboat men pulled him out of the water,
immediately the police boat was alongside them as well.
"He was taken to Chiswick Pier where he was landed. I think he was
probably in handcuffs, he was certainly covered in a red rug, and he
walked past me smirking."
"Everybody was booing him, everyone was extremely unhappy with him."
After the race had been completed there was more drama as one member
of the Oxford crew collapsed.
Alexander Woods had to be lifted from the bow of the boat and was
given emergency medical treatment.
The world-famous event is broadcast in 200 countries and attracts
around 250,000 people to the banks of the Thames.
It is not the first time it has been temporarily halted.
In 2001 the race was stopped by the umpire just over a minute after
the start following repeated warnings to both crews to move apart and
then a clash of blades for which Oxford was blamed.
The race was subsequently restarted and Cambridge rowed to victory.
No comments:
Post a Comment