Boat Race

When

Saturday, 24th March 2018,

17:00 to 19:00 onwards

Racing starts at 17:30

Where

The Meeting Point

39 rue du Taciturne

1000 Brussels

cash bar

Signup by 20th March  with doodle indicating  how many guests

FREE for members and friends

Contact

Steve Laycock

president(at)camsoc.be

Dear Members,

For us who were blessed with the priceless gift of having attended Cambridge rather than ending up swathed in the tentacles of Oxonian doom, the Boat Race offers the opportunity to forego CamSoc’s traditional alliance with our less fortunate friends of the Oxford Society and indulge in some institutional rivalry.

What better way to celebrate our superior sportsmanship than during the live streaming of the boat races on the afternoon of 24th March? To that end yourself and interested friends are most welcome to a Special Cambridge-Oxford Nautical Mixer at The Meeting Point, 39 Rue du Taciturne, 1000 Brussels, just a short distance from our normal mixer venue at the Aloft at any time from 17:00 onwards . The Women’s Race starts at 17.30 and the Men’s Race at 18.30, so we have booked the venue exclusively for us for two hours from 17.00 but will be able to stay on for as long as we like after this.

The event is free of charge, though a contribution to UK Cancer Research, in whose favour the Boat Race is held, would be very much appreciated.  Please indicate by 20th March whether you are coming by completing the doodle indicating  how many guests you will be bringing.

The Meeting Point is centrally situated close to the Schumann and Maelbeek metro stations and offers a wide selection of pub foods e.g. hamburgers, pastas, pizzas, steaks, frites as well as beer on tap, cocktails, wine etc all at very reasonable prices  (e.g. pizza Margherita is 8 euros). Each person will be responsible for ordering and paying for their own consumption so you can choose to eat and drink as much or as little as you want. Since the Societies have to guarantee that a minimum amount of 250 euros will be spent during the evening in order to have the venue exclusively for 2 hours whilst the races are on, everyone  will be given a jeton as they arrive. We would ask you then to show the jeton to the bar staff each time you order and pay, so that they can add this to a running total for the evening to calculate whether the total has been achieved. Any shortfall will be paid by the Societies.

Our esteemed member and resident coxswain Robert Stanbury has organised a simple sweepstake for this event based on the best estimate for the winning Boat Race time. Prize: a bottle of ‘pop’ for both the men’s and women’s events to whomever comes closest to predicting the outcome of either race (the timing). Tide, land water, wind, race outcomes, and other factors are all determinants. Plenty of scope for both modern algorithms and old-fashioned savvy! (We all know who’s getting thrashed as usual).

Come join to cheer our Cantab girls and lads on, snickering at our Oxonian friends who will be wetting the carpet as the Cambridge teams speed down the Thames into glorious victory while the others are still kicking the cobwebs off their rafts.

We hope to see many of you there to sport our colours!